Opinion: No Dandy Dan (Quayle) Dancing with the Stars

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Speaking of vice presidential picks, in this the 20th anniversary month of Sen. Dan Quayle’s selection as the No. 2 presidential partner for Republican George H. W. Bush, we have official word from Quayle headquarters in Arizona.

The report that Quayle will dance his way across the stage in a pretend competition with other people who used to be sort-of famous for something else is an unfounded rumor.

According to a very polite and patient Quayle assistant, who was answering a stream of calls in the Scottsdale heat, the nation’s 44th vice president was indeed invited to appear on the TV show and never even seriously considered it.

‘We get all kinds of crazy requests for him to do things,’ she said. ‘He’s busy with his work.’

Apparently, if you can imagine such a thing, some show biz publicity types invite a famous person to appear, knowing full well they won’t, and then leak erroneous word to celebrity writers just to get people to talk about their show. Judging by this item, it works.

Quayle, the last vice presidential nominee to be announced during the actual nominating convention, is chairman of an international division of Cerberus Capital Management, the giant multi-billion-dollar fund that now controls Chrysler and GMAC Financial Services, among many other things in many places, which is what you can do when you control billions of dollars.

So what about Walter Mondale? Is he available to merengue, a dance that not many people know wasn’t invented by a more recent vice president?

--Andrew Malcolm