Politics & Power Quote by Dan Quayle

Quayle’s line is a preemptive self-rescue, delivered with the strained cheer of someone who knows the room is already laughing. As vice president, he’s insisting on proximity to power - “a great deal of time,” “very close,” “personal,” “loyal” - stacking adjectives like sandbags against a flood: the persistent cultural story that he was ornamental, error-prone, and managed rather than managing. The phrase “as they say” nods to that story without naming it, laundering a sharp accusation into a folksy aside.

“Potted plant” is the tell. It’s comic, domestic, and humiliating: a thing placed for ambiance, watered occasionally, expected not to speak. By choosing it, Quayle acknowledges the caricature while trying to reclaim it through humor. The problem is the image lands because it’s vivid and already plausible; it doesn’t rebut the stereotype so much as underline it. The joke is defensive, not liberating.

Context does the heavy lifting. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Quayle was relentlessly framed by late-night TV and political commentary as the lightweight on the Bush ticket, a man whose public gaffes became proof of emptiness. This quote reads like an attempt to reassert agency inside an administration that treated loyalty as a job qualification and proximity as influence. He’s arguing he matters because he’s present, but the subtext admits the real charge: that presence isn’t the same as power.