Some time after Dan Quayle's embarrassing spelling bee incident (in which he incorrectly advised a contestant that 'potato' was spelled with a trailing e), he addressed his critics:
"I should have caught the mistake on that spelling bee card," he admitted. "But as Mark Twain once said, 'You should never trust a man who has only one way to spell a word.'"
Quayle, it was later pointed out, had in fact been quoting President Andrew Jackson...
"I should have remembered that was Andrew Jackson who said that," Quayle declared some time later, "since he got his nickname 'Stonewall' by vetoing bills passed by Congress."
Ironically, Quayle was wrong once again, having confused Andrew Jackson with Confederate General Thomas J. 'Stonewall' Jackson -- who had aquired his nickname at the first Battle of Bull Run.
["George W. Bush's Secret Service name is 'Tumbler,'" Conan O'Brien once declared. "That's because 'Bumbler' was already taken by Dan Quayle."]
Sources
Esquire, Aug. 1992
