Former VP Dan Quayle '69 Shares Thoughts on Partisan Divide, President Trump & Monon Bell Rivalry

July 26, 2019

"Former Vice President Dan Quayle said Thursday there are such extremes from both sides serving in Washington he's not sure he'd be considered a conservative in 2019 -- and he's not surprised there is dissent in D.C.," begins an Indianapolis Star story. The piece recaps an interview Quayle, a 1969 graduate of DePauw University, did with an Indianapolis sports talk radio show.

"We're going through this phase right now, both left and right, you send the extremes down there, no wonder they don't get along," Quayle told the program. "Used to be center left, center right and I was always considered a conservative. I still (am), but i don't know in today's political environment where I'd fit in. Some of the conservatives probably wouldn't think I was conservative, but I am."

The polarization comes with a cost, added the 44th Vice President of the United States. "You look at where we are (today) and I look back to how we got things done and we had a Democrat congress. We got things done on the environment...we got budgets through, we saw the Soviet Union disappear and Germany reunited, apartheid in South Africa eliminated. We did all this in four years. So you look at today, nothing gets done, so it's a big difference."

Of President Donald Trump, Quayle noted, "I could use a little different style for sure. But what he's accomplished with the economy, with the judicial appointments, taking on China...I think he's done a lot of good things. The tone and style I would try to change that a little bit, but he's not going to change."

Dana Hunsinger Benbow writes, "Quayle, who went to DePauw University, said he attended all four of the Monon Bell football games while he was in school. 'And I remember they'd always try to steal that Monon Bell, those Wabash guys,' he joked. 'They stole our girls. They stole our Monon Bell. Not very good people.'"

Read more at IndyStar.com. The radio interview can be found here.

A political science major at DePauw, Quayle captained the Tiger men's golf team. He went on to earn a J.D. from the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law. He was elected to two terms each in the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate before becoming vice president.

Now the chairman of Cerberus Global Investments, Quayle has made many return visits to DePauw. He's been awarded the University's McNaughton Medal for Public Service and in March 2015 was a guest of the Timothy and Sharon Ubben Lecture Series. That talk is summarized in this article; video is embedded below.