Quayle, Kennedy Become Unlikely Fellow Travelers

Lest anyone doubt that politics makes strange bedfellows, Vice President Dan Quayle announced today that Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) will accompany him to the March 11 presidential inauguration in Chile.

Quayle, champion of the Republican right, held a photo session with Kennedy, symbol of the Democratic left, to announce that Kennedy will be in the official U.S. delegation to the inauguration of Patricio Aylwin.

“It shows the bipartisan commitment to the advancement of democracy in Chile and the Western Hemisphere,” he told reporters.

Aylwin was elected Dec. 14 as an opposition candidate after 16 years of military rule under Augusto Pinochet, the army general who came to power in a 1973 coup that ousted the elected government of Marxist Salvador Allende.

The inauguration will take place in Valparaiso, a port city 75 miles west of Santiago, where Pinochet is building a new capital.

Kennedy, who co-sponsored the Job Training Partnership Act with Quayle when the latter was a senator from Indiana, said he was “delighted” to be chosen for the delegation, which by tradition would have bipartisan representation.

“The restoration of democracy in Chile has been something which the American people have felt extremely deeply about over a long time,” Kennedy said. “This has been an extremely painful process, and I think it’s another indication of the winds of change that are taking place in the world.”

Quayle used the photo session in the Old Executive Office Building next door to the White House to present his “longtime friend” Kennedy with a candle-lit pastry to mark his 58th birthday, 258 years to the day after the birth of George Washington.