Dan Quayle

Somebody told me the other day that the Secret Service has orders that if George Bush is shot, they're to shoot Quayle. James Danforth "Potatoe" "No Jack Kennedy" Quayle was the Vice President of the United States during the George H. W. Bush Presidency. Bush chose Quayle as his running mate to pander to the far-right wing of GOP, including his Bircherite ancestry: his parents were proud John Birch Society members. He is also a professional dumbass and the late-20th century's greatest gift to the art of satire. (He may have also been a Time Lord.) Quayle's political stature was immortalised in the first edition of as the benchmark for the poorest performance in the game (and continues to serve as such in the latest editions). He is a serious contender for "worst Vice President ever" and that is a list that includes a Sith Lord, who wanted to conquer the “hollow Earth” and took a 9-month leave during a crisis, a person so corrupt even Nixon wanted no piece of him, freakin' Aaron Burr, and three people  engaged in active treason.

The chief reason for his inclusion on RationalWiki is that despite his near-heroic level of dumbassery, given the choice, most people would have given anything to have him back as Vice President over George W. Bush's VP, Dick Cheney, as stupid is better than evil, although some claim there isn't really a difference. Many were convinced that if the Republicans had won the Presidency in 2008, America would have basically had Dan Quayle on estrogen as the VP. He made an amazingly pitiful run for the presidency in 2000, though the eventual GOP nominee was little better in hindsight.

Danny And 'Nam
The less privileged – from the ghettos and the hills of Appalachia and Midwest steel mills and automobile factories – fought that war in disproportionate numbers; the best and the brightest planned the war but did not send their sons.

One of the most famous controversies regarding Quayle is the fact he didn't serve in the Vietnam War despite being perfectly eligible to have done so. Of course, the massive difference in class regarding those who planned the war and those who fought it was long known by the time Quayle ran for Vice President, and in Quayle's case it is believed that he used connections his father had made to join the National Guard as opposed to fighting in Vietnam, a conflict he was fully in support of at the time.