Bush-Quayle had a dominant victory in the 1988 election, winning 40 states and the electoral vote by a total of 426 to 111. After the 1988 election, Republicans carefully studied the "Quayle factor," and found that the Vice President cost the ticket no more than 2% of the popular vote, not a big deal (link:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,976160-2,00.html[FONT=arial,sans-serif][SIZE=-1][/SIZE][/FONT])
Quayle was an embarrassment in many ways, but not for his youthful handsome appearance. Quayle was an embarrassment because he came across like a such a moron, his lack of intelligence was mocked constantly -- his lack of raw political skill, all the embarrassing and dumb statements he'd make in public, all the Quayleisms, especially the famous "potato/potatoe" incident where he corrected an elementary school student's correct spelling of potato" to "potatoe." He was also heavily slammed for being a spoiled rich kid who used his family connections to dodge service in Vietnam. Finally, there was the famous VP debate where Quayle compared his service in the Senate to that of JFK, and the Dem VP candidate slammed him by saying "Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy."
Anyway, regarding the issue of choosing a VP that brings youthful, good looks, charisma and raw political skill to the table, I'd start by looking at Kerry's decision to pick Edwards as his VP in 2004. You want to talk about lack of political experience, it doesn't get any worse that John Edwards. The guy was a career personal injury plaintiff attorney before he won a seat in the US Senate in 1998, and served one term as a Senator (he didn't seek re-election in 2004 because he was focused on his VP campaign instead). Before Edward's one term as Senator, he had zero political, not even at the local or state level. Yet, I don't remember his lack of experience being a huge deal in either his impressive campaign for the 2004 Presidential nomination or during his campaign as Kerry's VP... although it should have been a very big deal.
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