Quayle Fires Back at ‘Naysayers’ at AF Academy Speech

Vice President Dan Quayle told U.S. Air Force Academy graduates Wednesday that the “naysayers” who scoff at the Administration’s family value slogans “are the same ones who used to mock and scorn our military.”

“These critics have derided your patriotism and your pride,” Quayle said. “They have called the military out of touch, insensitive, reactionary or worse.”

The vice president pressed on with his latest theme, family values, which created a furor last week when he said that fictional television character Murphy Brown set a bad example by having a child out of wedlock and that marriage is “probably the best anti-poverty program there is.”

Quayle fired back at the “cultural elite” who clashed with him in last week’s Murphy Brown flap.

Most children born outside marriage are unlikely to live a comfortable life, the vice president said. “Children born out of wedlock are more likely to live in poverty, more likely to have trouble in school and more prone to delinquency than those who are raised by two parents. These are facts, not opinions.”

In referring to “naysayers,” Quayle spokesman Jeff Nesbit said, the vice president meant “the liberal media elite, all the columnists who have pontificated” on Quayle’s Murphy Brown speech, “the cultural elite in Hollywood” and television comedians.

Quayle said the role of government is to create a good environment for families, centered on values such as hard work, integrity and personal responsibility.

But he said it should be left to companies, not the government, to decide whether to provide policies such as family leave.