
To head off the questions, Dan Quayle was George H. W. Bush's vice president, and later made a bid for the Republican primary for the 2000 election. Obviously, he failed.
I admit that I had to look him up because I totally forgot what he did. And I guess this is just another opportunity to say that jokes like this really date the comic and shouldn't be used if you intend people to be reading it, say... ten years down the road.