STAND BY YOUR MAN

Almost exactly twenty years ago, when I was Vice President Dan Quayle’s chief of staff, we faced an attempt by some aides to President George H.W. Bush to dump Quayle at the last minute. President Bush refused. Doing so, he thought, would be disloyal and dishonorable.

So the Bush-Quayle ticket went on to face the voters that November. We received 37.5 percent of the vote, compared to 53.4 percent four years before. Some who’d pushed to remove Quayle were quick to wonder whether things would have been different if he had been dumped. As it happens, they wouldn’t have been—but in any case, President Bush treated their second-guessing with well-deserved scorn. We had lost—but we had lost with dignity.