The power of fallacy
Dan Quayle resurfaces, to perpetuate a myth
The power of fallacy
Dick Polman, Inquirer National Political Columnist
Dan Quayle...It's been nearly 11 years since I last featured that name. Back in the summer of 1999, when he was seeking the Republican presidential nomination, I trailed him in Iowa as he trudged from one evangelical church to another in the hopes of finding a friendly crowd - and maybe 30 people would show up, with typically half of them pledged to a rival. That August he finished eighth in the Iowa GOP straw poll, which was no surprise, since most Iowa Republicans viewed his lightweight image as a deal-breaker, and a month later Quayle declared himself kaput.
But no ex-politician can resist the temptation to weigh in on the weighty issues of the day - not even a guy who is mostly remembered as a one-term vice president who misspelled potato at a spelling bee (Quayle later wrote, "It was a defining moment of the worst kind imaginable"). So it was a kick to see George H. W. Bush's understudy resurface on Sunday, as a guest columnist in The Washington Post, where he sought to counsel his fellow Republicans on the importance of wooing the tea-party crowd.
The highlight of the column was a passage that flunked the most basic facts of '90s political history - the equivalent of misspelling potato. It's worth a brief examination, if only to demonstrate how lightweights bow so easily to the power of fallacy.
Quayle's basic argument Sunday was that Republicans' political prospects hinge on persuading the tea-party movement not to run its own candidates - because if the movement does run its own candidates, it would split the anti-Democratic turnout and make life easier for President Obama and his congressional allies. Quayle then attempted this analogy:
"Many remember the Reform Party of the 1990s, which formed around the candidacy of Ross Perot. I sure do, because it eliminated any chance that President George H.W. Bush and I would prevail over Bill Clinton and Al Gore in 1992. What started as a grass-roots phenomenon ended with 19 percent support at the ballot box - and a majority of those voters would probably have gone Republican in a two-party race. Speaking on behalf of the Bush-Quayle campaign, to this day we firmly believe that Perot cost the Republican Party the White House."
A majority of those voters would probably have gone Republican in a two-party race...There it is again: the durable canard - long embraced by many Republicans, and repeated ad nauseum over the past 18 years - that independent candidate Perot delivered the White House to Clinton in '92 by snatching a pivotal share of GOP voters and thus splitting the anti-Democratic turnout.
Thank you, Dan Quayle, but the last thing we need in public life is another fact-challenged Republican.
Let's first dispense with the simplest errors. He writes, "Many remember the Reform Party of the 1990s, which formed around the candidacy of Ross Perot. I sure do, because it eliminated any chance that President George H.W. Bush and I would prevail..." Memo to Quayle: The Reform Party wasn't even created until 1995 - three years after your losing race. (Doesn't The Post have editors who can fact-check stuff like that?)
Far more importantly, there is no empirical evidence whatsoever that Clinton won in '92 only because of Perot's presence. Zip, nada.
The exit polls, conducted by Voter Research & Surveys, reported that, if Perot had not been in the race, 38 percent of his voters would have cast ballots for Clinton-Gore, and 37 percent would have supported Bush-Quayle. The rest would have found another third-party candidate, or would not have voted at all. VRS concluded that Bush might have theoretically picked up enough Perotistas to wrest Ohio away from Clinton, but Clinton still would've won the election by a margin of 160 electoral votes.
Quayle, like other nurturers of the myth, seems also to have forgotten about Perot's drop-out phase. Perot actually quit the race in July, on the eve of Clinton's Democratic convention, only to change his mind in October and leap back in. For nearly three months, in other words, incumbent Bush and challenger Clinton had a two-man race. Therefore, under the Quayle theory of history, he and Bush should have been scoring solidly in the polls; after all, with Perot absent, all those Republican voters would have returned home to boost the Bush numbers.
But that's not what actually happened. During those three months of two-man competition, Bush trailed Clinton in every poll, usually by double digits. It takes maybe 30 seconds of Googling to find the New York Times-CBS poll results for September 1992; in both polls that month, Clinton was on top by roughly a dozen percentage points. And on the eve of Perot's October re-entry, CBS had Clinton ahead by 13.
Fast forward to election day. Clinton's winning margin over Bush was only five points. In other words, the actual math suggests that Perot, by resurfacing in the race, actually took votes away from Clinton.
So, despite all this fact-based evidence, why does Quayle cling to the baseless myth that Perot gave the White House to Bill Clinton?
Take a wild guess: Because it's a handy way to dispute the legitimacy of Clinton's presidency. That should not come as a surprise, of course, since so many Republicans today dispute the legitimacy of Barack Obama's presidency - as evidenced by the new Harris poll, in which 45 percent of Republican rank-and-filers say they believe Obama is foreign-born and thus ineligible for the job.
It wouldn't be fair to blame this mentality solely on Quayle; he'll soon be back on the golf course, his punch line status forever secured. But his cameo appearance this weekend was a reminder that, with respect to the empirical facts, his party all too often prefers to misspell potato.
Regardless of the inaptness of his analogy, it would seem his conclusion may be correct: A spin-off Tea-party candidate would be prblematic for a Republican nominee. Of course, it's too early to know what the economy will look like during the next presidential election. At this point in H.W. Bush's presidency, SNL was having skits where the dem nominees were trying to avoid being picked because it looked so fruitless. Cuomo: "I have mob ties." Funny skit fo sho.— etotheb- Pointless.— whiplash240
- Nonsense as usual:) From the last blog. lib, a form of socialism I'll call 'Obama-ism' is alive and well in Wash DC. 1) federal govt. now involved in your healthcare 'cradle to grave' (giving grants to poor people just makes them dependent on the feds. forever). 2) federal govt. in charge of the vast majority of Americans retirement plan in a giant ponzi scheme Bernie Madoff would be proud of. 3) federal govt. more and more involved in the education process as well. 4) federal govt. growing and growing at the same time we have trillion dollar plus yearly federal deficits. 5) Cap n trade will put the federal govt. in charge of how you heat your home and how much it costs. I didn't even go into the federal govt. owning pieces of GM and AIG and still subsidizing Fannie/Freddie. Make no mistake about it, Obama-ism is socialistic. He and you believe the federal govt. can run each of these tasks from Wash DC better than the average American can for themselves and I disagree.— NEPhilly
- Meanwhile back in reality and on planet Earth, Obama's approval rating on healthcare is a mere 34% per CBS 4-2-10. So much for all the Obama propaganda being spun out from Polman and his ilk.— CD75
Thanks for the clarification from 18 years ago. Now back to 2010, where the evidence for the accusations by liberals that the tea party is racist and prone to violence is...imagine this.. Zip, nada.— jmc- I had always thought that Perot had contributed to Bush's defeat. Clearly some of the data you show suggests otherwise. What is also interesting to ponder, though, is whether the Tea Party movement will go the way of the Reform Party. One difference is that Perot's party was all about Perot, while the Tea Party has as its main elements 1) conservative backlash 2) economic displacement from the recession and 3) racism against an african-american president. As #2 improves, will the Tea Party cool off, or will #1 and 3 keep it chugging along?— Nalaka
- #3 is nonsense. More like not believing this country elected someone so liberal as President & how he hid it so well during the campaign (only Joe the Plumber could get an honest answer:). The President could be yellow with purple spots for all I care, but he can't disguise himself as a moderate any longer, regardless of his color, imho.— NEPhilly
- NEP, agreed on intrusion into healthcare and the massive size of government - but the great 'Ponzi scheme' has been out there for many a year and hasn't been an issue till recently. It was conceived as a safety net because the private sector used people till there was nothing left, then threw them away with on means of support. When we last looked AIG was owned by shareholders, largely institutional and financial. GM is largely owned by penny stock gamblers because GM stiffed the old stockholders and was allowed to re-group to avoid its obligations. Cap& Trade is a crapshoot at best right now and hopefully won't see completion, but deregulation will put companies, who have and will game the market, in position to determine how much heating your home will cost.— JimR
- jim, you are reasonable and you know SS (I notice you didn't say it wasn't a ponzi scheme:) and Medicare as unfunded govt. entitlements have to be addressed eventually. GWB did try & nowadays people should know better than to leave it all up to the govt. The AIG and GM comment was just for fun:) Cap n trade however is just a way for the govt. to raise energy taxes (if you use a form of energy they don't approve of:) without actually raising taxes on citizens, but on companies who in turn will raise prices. Luckily for me as a conservative (and us as a country, imo) is that all these proposed new taxes and mandates and govt. growth that liberals propose do nothing but put a drag on the economy and hasten their own demise:)— NEPhilly
- unless the US gets a handle on CO 2 emissions climate change is going to make these complaints about "isms" quite moot. Our current security arrangemtns which rely on imported oil and destroy the environment such that parts of the US could become uninhabitable are not sustainable. the pensions paid to sailors on aircraft carriers in persian gulf are unsustainable; wars over oil are not sustainable; bubble and bust economy is not sustainable; the list goes on- folks we grew up with cheap gas; adn the rest of the world living in the stone age; things have changed and the US has to change;— jbcanoe
- NEPhilly, I'm interested to learn where you get your ideas about the poor who are on welfare or unemployment. I don't agree with they want to stay on those programs forever. Have you ever had to be on unemployment? Believe me, you can't live on it well, if at all. Same for welfare. Are there studies to support your premise? I readily admit that my opinion is from having been unemployed before -- and it's the scariest, most anxiety-producing, horrible situation I can imagine. If I hadn't had some savings, I would have lost my shirt. It's not where I would want to live, but I am very glad I got some assistance during that time.— NigeltheMastiff
- nigel, where did I say the poor want to stay on the programs forever? That being said, my father was a union carpenter so I know unemployment and the wife has been laid off several times so I understand it is needed. There are studies however that show that a person looks harder for work the last 4 weeks of unemployment (just human nature) & if you keep extending it you give people a reason to postpone that last job search where they take a lesser job.— NEPhilly
- NEPhilly, I got the idea from your first post of the day: "...federal govt. now involved in your healthcare 'cradle to grave' (giving grants to poor people just makes them dependent on the feds. forever)."— NigeltheMastiff
- Man was this ever a whiny, reaching for straws post. Disputing the legitimacy of Clinton presidnecy? huh? and that Harris poll, oh boy.........just face facts Dick. People liked Obama, as a country, we believed him and voted him in as president. He has not turned out to be what we thought he would (and what he told us), so his popularity is shriveling under the weight of unpopular policies and more than a year of 10 percent unemployment. This is not some diabolical republican seige. Its America. You put up or you;re out. Ask Donovan McNabb.— tjm333126
- Great. Perot did not cost Bush 41 the 1992 election. Thanks for clearing that up. It has been on my mind for the past 18 years, nagging at me and keeping me up at night. Now, what about the new position to not use nukes if attacked with biological or chemical weapons if the country that attacked us is a signatory to the non-proliferation agreement and in compliance? What about the Gallup poll showing over 40% of the tea party members are independents, and 8% are Democrats? What about Admadinejad laughing at Obama, saying "go ahead and impose sanctions" since it will not make a difference? Where has the past 15 months of the extended hand gotten us? How about Putin in Venezuela selling $5 billion of arms to Chavez, not to mention nuclear technology? The "economy" added 162,000 jobs last month, but with 48,000 of those for the census and 40,000 added by temp agencies, what is the prognosis for future private sector job growth? Oil is at $87/barrel, what is Obama going to do about it? The START treaty about to be signed is being highly touted, but no mention that it contains an "opt-out" provision for Russia. So much damage being done by this failed president, but at least I now know that Perot did not cost Bush 41 the 1992 election. Phew!— tom - wilmington, de
Cited by the Columbia Journalism Review as one of the nation's top political reporters, and lauded by the ABC News political website as "one of the finest political journalists of his generation," Dick Polman is a national political columnist at the Philadelphia Inquirer. He is on the full-time faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, as "writer in residence." Dick has been a frequent guest on C-Span, MSNBC, CNN, NPR and the BBC. He covered the 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004 presidential campaigns.
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