Dan Quayle Visits Washington

The 1992 presidential election was memorable for many reasons.  It featured incumbent George Bush and his running mate, Dan Quayle, seeking to extend 12 years of Republican rule in the Oval Office against newcomer Bill Clinton and his running mate, Al Gore.  Also in the mix, for the first time to a significant degree, was an independent candidate, Ross Perot, running alongside James Stockdale.

Candidates crisscrossed the country for months, getting their agendas across to the American people.  Bush had been a very popular president due to our successes in the Iraq War, but later economic problems caused the shine to wear off and the race was close.

On September 27, 1992, it was announced that, along with his scheduled stop in Peoria, Dan Quayle would appear in Washington and at Eureka College.

On Tuesday, September 29, 1992, Quayle's bus "Victory 2" rolled into Washington and parked on the square before a throng a thousand strong.  He disembarked, said a few words, and shook as many hands as he could. 

"This is where the real people live!" was his most popular comment during his stump speech, which excited most of the crowd.

Not everyone was there to cheer on the vice-president, however.  There were opposers who brought their own signs and there was stark division in "the real people."

Considering how divided the country has become today, it was somewhat prophetic back in 1992 when Mike Bailey of the Peoria Journal Star wrote this in his editorial regarding the Quayle visit:

I wonder if the politicians who've tried to exploit the differences between Americans for political gain in this election have any sense of the damage they've done. Where once we were all just Americans, now we are white or black, young or old, rich or poor, pro-life or pro-choice, public school or private school, World War II veteran or Baby Boom draft dodger, Christian or non-Christian. I'm no fan of Ronald Reagan, but I never came away from one of his speeches feeling bad, or feeling alone.

On November 3, the election was held, and Bill Clinton defeated incumbent Bush rather soundly.