Politics & Power Quote by Dan Quayle

Quayle’s line is a campaign-pamphlet promise with a nervous wink, and that “yes” is doing more work than the rest of the sentence combined. He stacks a comforting list - people, education, jobs, family, neighborhood - the soft architecture of middle-class aspiration. It’s not policy detail; it’s a moral inventory. Each noun is a photo-op category, designed to feel apolitical even as it signals priorities: social stability, work as dignity, community as the unit of national health.

Then he pivots: “and yes, a thing we call America.” The phrasing is oddly defensive, as if he’s preempting an eye-roll from elites or critics who treat patriotism as corny branding. Calling America “a thing” simultaneously shrinks and sanctifies it: not an argument, not a set of institutions, but an object you can hold, protect, and invest in. It’s the rhetorical move of late-20th-century conservatism trying to fuse economics and sentiment - public spending (“invest”) justified through an almost consumer-like faith in national identity.

Context matters: Quayle spoke from inside an era of image politics and culture-war anxieties, when “family” and “neighborhood” were codewords in a broader debate over crime, welfare, and social change. The line’s intent is to reclaim the warm language of communal care without conceding liberal ownership of it. Subtext: patriotism isn’t just flag-waving; it’s a ledger of domestic virtues, and the right can be the party of that investment.