Vice President Dan Quayle sometimes requires a kind and tactful audience. He is, after all, the man who addressed the United Negro College Fund and transformed its slogan -- "a mind is a terrible thing to waste" -- into "what a waste it is to lose one's mind." Mr. Quayle thus owes a debt to a 12-year-old student who displayed an initial talent for diplomacy when the Vice President called on his school on Monday.

William Figueroa is a student at Rivera Elementary School in Trenton, N.J. On a campaign stop promoting President Bush's "Weed and Seed" program, Mr. Quayle visited William's class and conducted a spelling bee. The boy, as nervous, presumably, as any 12-year-old would be in that situation, was asked to go to the blackboard and spell the word "potato." Which he did. Correctly.

Mr. Quayle, however, didn't see it that way. He glanced at a cue card, which spelled the word "potatoe." At the Vice President's urging, William added the erroneous e .

"I knew he was wrong, really," the boy explained later. "He's the Vice President and I couldn't argue with him with all the people there."