Free Warm and Witty Side of Attila the Hun by Jeffrey Sackett

associates, and never friends. Theirs is usually a marriage of convenience, and is frequently strained. When FDR died and Truman became president, the Secretary of War took him aside to tell him about the Manhattan Project. It had never occurred to Roosevelt to inform his new vice-president about the atomic bomb. When Lyndon Johnson went from being Senate Majority Leader to JFK's vice-president, he went from being one of the most powerful people in the country to being a virtual nonentity, and he resented not only the demotion but also the disrespectful way many of Kennedy's people (especially the president's brother Robert) treated him. Perhaps for that reason he mistreated his own VP, Hubert Humphrey. LBJ frequently forgot to ask Humphrey to attend cabinet meetings, and on one occasion asked him to go and get him a sandwich. And when President Eisenhower was asked at a press conference during the 1960 presidential campaign if he could name any policies to which VP Nixon had contributed, he replied, "Give me a couple of weeks and I might be able to think of one."
    But Reagan's VP, George H.W. Bush, had a sense of humor about his role. Reagan never attended the funerals of foreign dignitaries, always sending his vice-president in his stead. Bush eventually mused that he should change his middle names from "Herbert Walker" to "You Die, I Fly." And during the 1988 presidential campaign, he referred to his foreign policy experience, including meetings with foreign leaders and then added, "Some of them were actually alive when I met them."
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    J. Danforth Quayle, VP for the first President Bush, has an undeserved reputation for stupidity. He actually is simply inarticulate and tends to suffer from a form of mental aphasia. He expresses complete thoughts incompletely and phrases things in such a way as to convey meanings the exact opposite of what he intended. In addition, his reputation has been injured by numerous ridiculous statements falsely attributed him. (He did not, for example, say while visiting Latin America that he wished he had taken Latin in high school.)
    But he did say "I love California. I practically grew up in Phoenix." What he meant was that he vacationed frequently in California while he was living in Arizona. He did say, "One word summarizes what it means to be vice-president, and that one word is to be prepared." He did say, "Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child." He did say, "The Holocaust was an obscene period in our nation's history. I mean in this century's history. But we all lived in this century. I didn't live in this century." And in attempting to express his interest in political science by frequently rereading Plato, he did say, "Every year I try to read The Republic," which does not quite convey the same meaning. When addressing a meeting of the United Negro College Fund, he garbled their slogan, "A mind is a terrible thing to waste." "What a waste it is to lose your mind," Quayle said. "Or not to have a mind is very wasteful. How true that it."
    A particularly prime example of Quayle’s unfortunate lack of rhetorical skills was a speech he gave to an assembly of NASA officials and astronauts, with the president and the first lady in attendance. He began by saying, “Welcome to President Bush, Mrs. Bush, and my fellow astronauts.” He then went on to say that “Space remains a high priority for NASA”; to note that “We see what we think are canals on Mars. Where there are canals, there is water. Where there is water there is oxygen, which means we can breathe”; and to express optimism by predicting that “The future will be better tomorrow.” Of course, scientific progress depends upon quality education, Quayle said. We must support the country’s teachers, because “Teachers are the only profession that teaches our children.” Our goal thus must be to have “The best educated American people in the