Dan Quayle

In his acceptance speech at the convention, Quayle chided the liberal Democratic Congress for limiting the terms of Presidents Bush and Reagan while refusing to support term limits for themselves. Is Quayle ignorant of the fact that it was a Republican Congress, chaired by conservatives, that passed the 22nd Amendment to limit presidential terms, in a tardy slap to the late President Franklin Roosevelt? Or is lying in order to win one of those famous family values the vice president learned when he was growing up?

Joe Martin, philosophical bedfellow of Mr. Republican himself, Robert Taft, in his maiden speech as Speaker of the House in that same heavily Republican 80th Congress, said, “Our American concept of government rests upon the idea of a dominant Congress.” One can only wonder if Martin and Taft, the father of the modern GOP, would have voted for the line-item veto or congressional term limits. Are all Republican leaders today ignorant of their own not-too-distant past? Or is the Republican concept of government linked to the fickle whim of the voter in deciding who is the majority party and who is not?

JEFF ROBBINS

Los Angeles