The voters ultimately will decide the political fate of Mr. Bush and Mr. Quayle, unless the Republican Presidential candidate and his advisers decide to drop the Senator from the ticket - a decision that now appears unlikely, and a remedy that probably would be worse than the complaint.

On the second question, however, even the Quayle controversy probably won't set off much public agitation for a change in the method of choosing vice-presidential nominees. No such discussion followed the Nixon ''fund crisis'' of 1952 or the removal of Tom Eagleton from the Democratic ticket in 1972. Perhaps Americans assume there's no better way; or that since vice presidents always have been chosen by Presidential nominees - at least since the 12th Amendment was ratified in 1804 -they always should be.

But vice presidents always stand only a heartbeat or a signature from the Oval Office. In the postwar era alone, Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson succeeded to the office upon the deaths of Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy, and Gerald Ford had to take over when Richard Nixon resigned. The age of terrorism, moreover, may have made Presidents more vulnerable to attack.

In the modern political era, vice presidents also are more often using the office to promote later Presidential nominations for themselves -Mr. Nixon in 1960, Hubert Humphrey in 1968, Walter Mondale in 1984 and Mr. Bush this year. Mr. Bush may make it, although none of the others were successful; but altogether, of the 10 Vice Presidents from Truman to Bush, 7 have become President, or a Presidential nominee, or both.

As Presidential nominees themselves have come to be chosen by their own independent efforts in primaries, they have somewhat similarly chosen their running mates by processes largely restricted to their own staffs. The effectiveness of these staff processes has varied with the nominee. But when vice presidents are more often becoming Presidents, and in an era when only the President's hand can be on the nuclear button, the choice of a vice-presidential candidate ought not to be left to one man's whim or campaign strategy or staff preference. We don't choose Presidents quite so cavalierly; why should we pay less attention to vice-presidential candidates?