Book reveals, Pence stopped by Dan Quayle on stop at Biden win

“Forget everything, you can’t do it, forget it.” It was these words of one of the least ‘appreciated’ vice presidents in recent American history, Dan Quayle, that perhaps convinced Mike Pence not to give in in one of the most critical moments of US democracy. It is another of the revelations that emerge from ‘Peril’, the book that Bob Woodward and Robert Costa have dedicated to the hectic weeks after the presidential elections in November 2020. Before becoming – on the fateful January 6, the day of the attack on the Capitol – the target of Donald Trump and his supporters, the then vice president would in fact have evaluated the possibility of complying with the request of his ‘boss’ to stop the process of officially proclaiming Joe Biden’s victory. To stop him, the strong opposition of his predecessor, the 74-year-old Quayle, who had held the same position in the presidency as George Bush Sr. An Indiana native and a Republican like Pence, Quayle – famous for his gaffes – has however come out of time from the political arena even if evidently in a moment of crisis Trump’s number two saw fit to rely on his judgment. The president counted on Pence to stop the proclamation process and entrust the final decision to the US Chamber where – using the 12th amendment to the US Constitution – the final vote would be entrusted to the individual states (with a republican majority) rather than to the deputies (with a majority Pence’s phone call reached Quayle at the end of December in Arizona: and in the story of Woodward and Costa the former vice president is determined to contest the alleged legal basis of a stop to the official proclamation, with an unprecedented decision on the White House entrusted to Congress. “That’s what I’m really trying to say to Trump – Pence vented – But he thinks it can be done and other people also say I have this power.” “You don’t have it, that’s enough” Quayle interrupted, ignoring Pence’s hesitations. “You don’t know what position I am in,” the latter confessed to his predecessor, however agreeing to oppose Trump’s maneuvers. The onslaught of January 6 turned Pence into one of the ‘heroes’ of resisting the maneuvers of the then tenant of the White House, but the phone call to Quayle opens a new vision on his attitude, highlighting how in the days before Trump’s deputy had really evaluated the possibility of supporting it. And this revelation, already relaunched with critical tones by the American press and TV, risks partially rewriting the judgment on the man who, in any case, ‘saved’ US democracy. A review of judgment that – in the opposite direction – could also take place for Quayle: until yesterday his place in American history was entrusted to the incredible gaffe of June 1992 in which – in front of TVs all over the world – he ‘corrected’ a child 12-year-old who had written the word ‘potato’ on the blackboard, inviting him to add a (nonexistent) ‘e’ at the end. From today on the other hand – according to CNN – the former vice president of Bush senior is ‘the man who saved democracy’ in the USA. An unexpected reversal of perspective for the 74-year-old Republican politician who jumped to attention in 1988 for having ended up – to general surprise – in the ticket with George Bush senior in the victorious elections of November 1988, defeating the Democrats Michael Dukakis and Lloyd Bentsen. An unmemorable experience in the White House, according to historians (‘potatoe’ aside), for the young republican with an always youthful appearance, also remembered for having attacked a popular TV series like ‘Murphy Brown’ complaining that he told the story of a woman who had decided to have a child and raise him without a father. On the political front, Quayle was a conservative and a ‘hawk’ in foreign policy who – on the occasion of the first Gulf War – tried to persuade Bush to extend military operations throughout Iraq, leading the attack on the capital Baghdad. Famous for the gaffes (such as when he described the Holocaust as ‘an obscene period in the history of our nation’, and then immediately corrected himself) Quayle was confirmed by Bush in the ticket for the 1992 elections, however, won by Clinton and Gore. In the following years he is remembered only in 1996 a memoir ‘Standing Firm’ and the Republican candidacy for the presidency in 2000, from which, however, he immediately withdrew to support George W. Bush. Then almost silence, up to the decisive opposition to Mike Pence.