No, the Palin comparison is apt.

To be fair, I always thought 'potatoe' might be a regional thing. I often spell "theatre", "dialogue", etc. And countries where it's commonplace to spell words such as "colour". But at least I do know those are all valid, I have no idea where he got his alternate spelling.

Or when he was trying to say, "A mind is a terrible thing to waste," and it came out as, "What a waste it is to lose one's mind -- or not to have a mind. How true that is."

"Hawaii has always been a very pivotal role in the Pacific. It is IN the Pacific. It is a part of the United States that is an island that is right here."
To his credit, though, he sounds very drunk in the Hawaii one.

"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."

I actually have to come to Quayle's defense re. Palin. When he botched a phrase, you could almost see the wheels in his head, desperately trying to figure out how he'd gone wrong and correct it, tragically never catching up to his mouth and larynx. In the infamous United Negro College Fund botch, you can just hear the internal monologue ". . . no, that's not right, no! Fix it, fix--no! That's worse! Do a charming segue out! Oh God!"

His speech disasters are articulate, in other words. Whereas any time Palin talks it's just this dead list of things that have to come out of her mouth and ugh ugh ugh.

Quayle was embarrassed by his ignorance because he knew leaders needed to be informed and articulate.

Palin uses it as a selling point because she believes certainty and cultural absolutism are more important than knowledge.

I had a second job at a thrift shop for about a ear around 2006 and one of the many things that came through was a plastic statue of Bush that said different "dumb Bush quotes" every time you pushed a button. There were maybe a dozen of them, but at least half were actually Quayle quotes being read by a Bush impersonator and passed off as Bush quotes, including all the stuff Cleaner82 posted.

Well, yeah. Once you realize that these morons you chuckle at have the capability and the capacity to kill the entire planet a dozen times over, it gets a bit depressing.

74 impressionist paintings thought what? What did they think!