The Vice Presidency: Second Look at a Second Lady

An affable, unimpressive public man improbably rises to great power, and it transpires that the master of his ascent is a strong-willed watchdog of a wife with an ambition as long as her enemies list. That political scenario is as classic as Lady Macbeth and as modern as Nancy Reagan, and it was just those predecessors that Marilyn Quayle was being compared to last week. After six months of investigation by Bob Woodward and David Broder, the Washington Post unfurled a seven-part series on Vice President Dan Quayle in which most of the critical scrutiny appeared to be directed not at...