Which vp misspelled potato

Only now did they remind me that potato is spelled without an e. I told them that the card had said otherwise, and Keith Nahigian went off to find it; but all of this was pointless. I knew that this was going to be big—certainly the story of the day, and maybe the next few days. I could feel myself getting increasingly angry as we rode to our next stop, a fundraiser.

If I lost some sense of proportion over the incident, my only defense is that everyone else was about to do that, too. Once the question was asked at the news conference, some reporters were seen heading out of the room to get a school dictionary to check on the spelling.

The Post regrets the error. Over the next several weeks, continuing through the Democratic Convention and beyond to this day, in fact , there was an avalanche of late-night jokes and Democratic sound bites. Politicians live and die by the symbolic sound bite. And the disputed incident in which President Bush appeared unfamiliar with a supermarket scanner brought Bush weeks of ridicule as an out-of-touch patrician.

I handed them a perfect opportunity to strike back. The potato gaffe helped them undo the positive image I had recently earned, not only with that speech but with my fairly aggressive campaigning throughout the primary season. Time had even run a picture that suggested the President was riding on my shoulders.

No, after potato, it was back to the same old cartoons. But even though the press was trying to make me out as a fool, I ignored them and went about the business of government. I met in Washington with Boris Yeltsin.

My next public appearance was before a group of radio talkshow hosts, a pretty rambunctious bunch. I was warned that I would be presented with a dictionary. I was happy to go along with the joke. I sat on a stool with a hand mike and no notes, just the opposite of the formal style imposed on me in the campaign.

If I made a mistake, it would be big news. There were no mistakes, and the press coverage was favorable. I had allowed my head to drop while listening to a question and considering my answer. In I finally got the last laugh. But there was one letter I got in that really put the incident into perspective better than anything else. The gaffe was replayed for days on TV and helped spread an image of Quayle as inept, although he blamed an incorrect cue card he was holding.

Now, 27 years later, BuzzFeed News tracked down Figueroa to find out what was going through his mind as all this happened. You can watch his reaction in the episode:. Some of his children even learned about the incident in social studies, before he had a chance to tell them. Figueroa said the former vice president has not reached out to him personally over the years, even though he hoped he eventually would.

I know it was a bad day for him, but it was a good day for me. There is one thing Figueroa is still upset about, though — that Quayle got to star in a commercial for potato chips and not him. Contact BuzzFeed News at bfnews buzzfeed.