In reply to: Probably. I think the issue with Harris is that so many posted by krudler
The media waited eagerly for every gaffe. And when potatoe hit, oh man. Ignoring the fact that he did it to keep from embarrassing a kid but the media loved, loved, loved it. It supported their dumb image.
His Murphy Brown speech might have been the most covered speech by any VP. And not in a good way, and rarely in the context of taking heat off of Bush, which I think was it's true aim.
Though, Andrew Johnson's VP inaugural address ruled.
Although, Mark Summers definitely has a bias
The events you mentioned certainly occurred. But they were pretty isolated incidents that came and went. But there wasn't the same daily drumbeat that you see today where everything people say publicly is available to edit, stream and promote. Hell, Fox News and MSNBC weren't even born yet.
Dan Quayle was a nightly target on the talk shows and (as noted below) was pilloried 10 times by SNL in a 4-year period. I'm not seeing coverage even close to that for Harris.
'The Quayle is dumb' drumbeat was constant. Moreso than Harris. I actually hear, see very little about Harris now. It's nothing close to what Quayle received.
I saw him speak during the campaign at work. He held up a model Space Shuttle. And promptly dropped it and broke it.
Quayle was not and is not dumb. He was politically immature, and it showed.
He deserves enormous credit for the Murphy Brown saga. Politically, that is. It played to the base and changed the story.
From April 29 - May 4, Los Angeles was torn apart by riots and Bush was receiving tremendous heat.
On May 19, just two weeks later, the whole country was up in arms over the Murphy Brown speech. It shoved LA off the front page.
It didn't save Bush's presidency. He was already doomed. But I was amazed at the time how quickly people just latched onto it and let the riots fall into the background. As a cynical political play, I thought it was pure genius.
and younger than Trump.
The Murphy Brown speech was pretty important. As historian Stephanie Coontz stated, it "kicked off more than a decade of outcries against the "collapse of the family."
both that speech and the potato spelling error occurred when Bush/Quayle were working on their reelection. But, the jokes about Quayle were around way before that.
This SNL skit came out a year before the Murphy Brown and potato gaffe