This is the story of a sudden breakthrough in the news media's understanding and appreciation of Vice-President Dan Quayle. Quayle was resurrected politically by the Washington press corps during this past spring and summer, elevated abruptly from buffoon to serious news subject. His comeback should provide hope to other politicians, perhaps including 1992 presidential aspirants who feel they have been buried too soon by the morticians of campaign journalism. On the other hand, Quayle's revival may disturb the sleep of those who would prefer not to be governed by a man who once blurted that he didn't live in the twentieth century.

As of early May, Quayle was a standing joke for Washington reporters. They had all but zipped up the body bag on his 1996 presidential hopes. For some time, in fact, they had devoted their occasional vice-presidential coverage to such matters as Dan Quayle wristwatches ("The numbers are not in the traditional sports. They're not even in any particular order" -- Los Angeles Times, May 20, 1990); dismal Dan Quayle opinion polls (only 23 percent of the public wanted Bush to retain his as a running mate, according to the March 4, 1991, New York Times); and Dan Quayle jokes (since December 1988 there have been at least 300 references to Quayle jokes in over a dozen major new outlets, from the Chicago Tribune to The Independent of London).

The original Quayle-as-dolt model was forged at the 1988 Republican convention, when the just-anointed Quayle burst onto our TV screens, slapping George Bush on the back and jumping about like a hyperactive child. In short order, journalists had reported on such deficiencies as his academic record (he was reported to have failed his political science comprehensive exam and to have been given a special, substitute exam), his amazingly low score on a National Guard communications skills test (he reportedly scored a 56, when the average score was 75), and how he allegedly had to pull strings to get into law school.

Once the "dim Dan" model was accepted, there followed a period in which reporters sought to discover just howd dim. Quayle's periodic gaffes were, of course, one potential indicator, so they were chronicled in some detail. When he addressed the United Negro College Fund, whose slogan is "A mind is a terrible thing to waste," Quayle said: ". . . you take the United Negro college fund model that what a waste it is to lose one's mind or not to have a mind is being very wasteful. How true that is." The New York Times (June 25, 1989) and at least forty other publications picked up that remark. At least nine news organizations, including The Boston Globe, Time, and Newsweek, trumpeted Quayle's 1989 comment in Hawaii on the state;s strategic importance: "Hawaii has always been a very pivotal role in the Pacific. It is part of the United States that is an island that is right here." The Chicago Tribune and other publications were quick to recycle Quayle's November 18, 1989, astronomical observation: "Mars is essentially in the same orbit . . . somewhat the same distance from the sun, which is very important. We have seen pictures where there are canals, we believe, and water. If there is water, that means there is oxygen. Oxygen, that means we can breathe."

In attempting to measure the limits of Quayle's brainpower, Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Republic (October 31, 1988) once got the man to size himself up. The two were discussing books, and Quayle recalled that Machiavelli, in The Prince, had set out three classes of mind among leaders. The first were creative and could lead independently. The second were not creative, but were able to lead by selecting good subordinates. Quayle continued: "And the third class of people didn't really know much of anything. And they were the worst kind of leaders, because not only were they not creative, but they didn't know what was right or wrong and they just sort of went by whatever they felt like. I've tried to figure out where I am. I know I'm not the first one because I don't think I have the creativeness . . . I'm somewhere between two and one." Hertzberg implied that a ranking rather lower on the scale was actually in order.

Diane Sawyer and Sam Donaldson probed Quayle's mind further on the August 17, 1989, broadcast of ABC's Prime Time Live. Their undisguised theme was: Just how dumb? some excerpts:

* DONALDSON: . . . when you were talking abut the Holocaust, you said it was the most obscene chapter in our history, meaning this country. Was that just nervousness? . . .

* QUAYLE: I have had hundreds of news conferences. I've made hundreds of speeches. I have made a few misstatements. And unfortunately you all take those misstatements and bring them back up and put them back on the air. The thing in my profession is that there are no retakes in my business. And I stand by all the misstatements that I've made. . . .

(Audience now sees video bite of Quayle's United Negro College Fund blooper.)

* SAWYER: When you watch it again, replayed on television, do you cringe?

* QUAYLE: Well, now Sam has one misstatement, you have the second misstatement, I presume you have a third one that I've had on my mind. . . .

* DONALDSON: Which one do you have in mind?

* Never mind . . . [Quayle adds at this point that he has made only three misstatements over the past year.]

* DONALDSON: Mr. Vice-President, is your wife smarter than you are?

* QUAYLE: You know something, Sam? I'm smart enough not to answer a question like that. . . ."

Indeed he was. That refusal seemed to provide at least some sort of answer to "Just how dumb?" : Dumb enough to appear on the show; not dumb enough to answer Sam's question.

After about a year in office, Quayle seemed to become less prone to verbal gaffery. Partly as a result of that, and partly because of his relatively innocuous vice-presidential duties, he was not in the news at all for days or weeks at atime. The Washington Post's Joel Achenback provided the standard explanation for this lack of exposure in an article last May 7: "Dan Quayle needs so little coverage because there seems to be nothing left to discover about him."

How wrong Achenback proved to be! For suddenly, starting on the very day his article appeared, journalists began uncovering new Quayle qualities, abilities, talents, and bidden depths. In a May 7 New York Times column that appears to have signaled the shift, no less a figure than A. M. Rosenthal described Quayle as able and sophisticated. Rosenthal declared: "He has made one speech after another that is carefully thought out, hard-minded, but idealistic, a credit to any officeholder." Time magazine, although tough on Quayle, revealed that, on trips abroad, Quayle had displayed "considerable diplomatic skill" and that officials credit him with being "quick, well-read, and hardworking (May 20)." The Los Angeles Times (May 9, page 1) told readers: "By all accounts, Quayle has acquitted himself admirably as vice-president. He has been a loyal adviser at the White House, an effective partisan on the stump . . . and a persuasive advocate on Capitol Hill." U.S. News & World Report (May 20) reported that Quayle (in Bush's absence) had covened top advisers to respond to a Philippines coup crisis in 1989, that he had shifted the administration's space priorities to increase unmanned exploration, and that he had worked deftly behind the scenes to weaken EPA anti-pollution rules, much to the satisfaction of conservatives and corporation.

Before long, Quayle was right where his media advisers maintained that he should have been form the start: he was being cited as a weighty news source and a serious aspirant for the 1996 Republican presidential nomination. In a front-page, above-the-fold July 5 Washington Post article by none other than Bob Woodward, Quayle was quoted as a respected authority on Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. (QUAYLE SAYS THOMAS CAN SHUN QUERIES . . . "'I would imagine that Judge Thomas will not answer that specific question [on abortion], nor is he obligated to answer that question,' Quayle said during an interview on Air Force Two.") Two days earlier, the Post had run a front-page story describing how Quayle had played a key role in the White House decision to select Thomas. The wall Street Journal, meanwhile, reported that Quayle (evidently buoyed by more favorable press coverage) appeared to be improving his standing with voters in one of the major primary states: "Aides are heartened by a California poll showing that, for the first time, those with a favorable opinion of him narrowly out-number those with a negative view. His Asian and east European trips came off without visible gaffes . . ." (June 14). Quayle was becoming a contender.

The shift in press perception of Dan Quayle;s abilities and intelligence did not take place gradually, nor was it simply a modification of earlier views. The change was nothing less than revolutionary. In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas S. Kuhn, the physicist and philosopher, describes how the advance of science alternates between normal and revolutionary phases. Judging by the news coverage of Quayle, things apper to work much the same way in journalism. According to Kuhn, normal science entails routine experimentation to test the limits of an accepted hypothesis or "paradigm." This is also what takes place in normal new reporting. Take as an example accounts of John Sununu's impressive intellect. Reporting on this subject started with the accepted truth that Sununu was brilliant. Reporters then simply fine-tuned our understanding of this. As The Washington Post recently charted the coverage: around 1985, news outlets put Sununu's I.Q. at 170; in March 1989, the London Daily Telegraph pegged it at 176; by the spring of 1990 the score was 180, according to the The New York Times and The Boston Globe. Reporters had found that Sununu's brainpower was actually increasing (it had gone up ten points or 6 percent over five years) -- an interesting discovery, but not one that altered fundamental perceptions of the man.

By contrast, Quayle's I.Q. practically doubled during the month of May alone, judging by the press coverage. Journalists did not have access to Quayle's test scores, to be sure. but one can infer from their reporting that some put his I.Q. at, say, 65 during the Dan-as-joke phase ending May 6. In the post-joke phase, beginning May 7, his score seems to have surged to perhaps 130.

Kuhn describes changes in perception of this magnitude in the world of science as paradigm shifts. One such revolutionary shift occurred after Copernicus and Galileo set forth startling evidence that the earth revolved around the sun. This ultimately transformed the view of the solar system, shattering the earlier paradigm in which the sun was thought to revolve around the earth. Just such a gestalt switch took place in the press's perception of Dan Quayle.

Whey was the old Quayle paradigm shattered? Quite simply, because Bush, on May 4, was sent to the hospital with atrial fibrillation, the irregular heartbeat heard 'round the world. The initial press reaction to this illness was "My God! Quayle!" -- to wit, QUAYLE JOKES NOT FUNNY NOW (Miami Herald, May 6). But almost immediately the news media began a frenetic upward revision of Quayle's abilities. Why? Jeffrey Frank of The Washington Post one explanation: "All of us know fellow mortals capable, in certain circumstances, of stunning spurts toward wisdom. Among them are any IRS agent who happens to be auditing us, various directors of school admission, Gerald Ford, and some editor at my newspaper." By this view, reporters had discovered a pragmatic truth about Quayle, influenced by such considerations as the need to have access to him if he reached the highest office.

I suspect, however, that for a good number of Washington reporters the new line on Quayle is also a matter of deeper, belated insight as to his talents. Many Washington journalists revere power. They understand that it is the ultimate commodity in this city, and have learned by long experience that power transforms that it touches. Thus, anyone who has a lot of power or is close to having it simply cannot be dullwitted: If they were, how could they ever have gotten as far as they did? Once many reporters accepted the reality that Quayle was, indeed, a heartbeat away from the presidency (and it took bush's own heartbeat scare to drive this point home), they could not help but observe the vice-president in a new light. They could not help but discover new dimensions in the man.

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