it wasn’t even close to what they were able to do to Dukakis though. And Clinton was a much more target rich environment than Dukakis.
I’m not saying Bush would have won, the fundamentals clearly favored Clinton. But there’s never been a better negative campaign than the Bush 88 campaign and in 92 it was pretty limp by comparison.
I used to think Perot cost Bush the victory, but now I think Bush was bound to lose no matter what. The economy was bad, the nation was ready for a change after 12 years of Republican presidencies, and Clinton was a superb campaigner.
Just for curiosity’s sake, though, in the wake of the Gulf War, or even in November 1991, could Bush have been popular enough to get reelected had the elections been then?
Indeed he could have been. I recall that some wag even suggested that the Democrats nominate Bush for president as well, simply making the contest one over the VP slot. (It was suggested that he wouldn’t be able to pass up the chance for a unanimous vote in the EC.)
I also recall a piece around the same time by, of all people, George Will in Newsweek indicating Bush’s vulnerability by pointing out that of the ten highest electoral vote state, nine had lost jobs.
Those things Bush and his men, as well as Democratic opponents like Tsongas, Kerrey, and Brown used against Clinton all have two things in common: they were not issue based, and not ripe to make someone into a “Massachusetts liberal” as they did Dukakis. Dukakis lost because of three things: the first was his stance on the death penalty (Willie Horton, revolving door prisons, and the Kitty Dukakis question at the debate), second was being made “weak on defense” (his opposition to certain weapons put on the screen next to him in a tank) while the Cold War was going on, and the third was Reagan’s high approval ratings at the time. Dukakis was clearly more target-rich. If they could have gotten Clinton on policy, maybe they’d have beat him. That’s why its important that Clinton was not a gaffe machine on personal issues or policy as Gore and Kerry, and Dukakis were. Oh yea, Walter “I’ll Raise Taxes” Mondale.
Perot was a factor before he entered. Throughout 1991 he made multiple television appearances, most notably many on Larry King, attacking the rising deficit and critical of Bush’s handling of the Gulf War. “Will you run for President?” “Who little ole me? Not me.” (Not exact quotes.) The politics of running while not running. February was when he announced what he was doing.
No one expected Buchanan to win … so? Bush still tacked Right in response. Bush still gave Buchanan a prominent speaking position in the Convention. Buchanan still sowed the populist message (from a Right-sided perspective) and fostered the image of Bush as an out of touch elitist (we like our rich folk self-made). Buchanan embarrassed Bush and he did it effectively.
Perot further pounded that in.
In April 92 Bush was polling 44% to Perot’s and Clinton’s 24 and 25% each. Perot gradually increased his share while Clinton stayed flat and Bush dropped. I read that as demonstrating the Perot’s impact on convincing more voters that Bush was out of touch and that the system needed change. And Perot’s novelty kept the public attention on that story line. Gennifer Flowers wasn’t even as interesting, and going to Oxford and protesting the War was not even in the same building.
Before Perot entered Bush was at a level that it could have been a horse race. By the time he dropped off a solid majority had decided it was time for a change.
Also, I fail to see the how Perot’s pre-2/20/92 Larry King appearances (if they even happened) somehow pushing a sitting President’s approval ratings to Jimmy Carter territory or facilitating the steep slope in Bush’s approvals. The Gallup polls you mention don’t show Clinton staying flat: they show him go down on the third and fourth dot of the 1992 race while Perot went up and Bush was flat. Clearly, Perot was the one splitting the change vote.
Buchanan you have a point on. Bush wasn’t tacking right tho because he was scared Buchanan would beat him: he tacked right so his voters wouldn’t stay home. I don’t know why he gets less blame than Perot for 1992, other than convenience. Part of Perot’s popularity came from not being far right of social issues, and was much closer to Clinton on them than Bush.
Are you looking at the same graph on those Gallup polls?
April: Bush 44; Perot 24; Clinton 25
June: Bush 31; Perot 39; Clinton 25
That was Perot going up, Bush dropping, and Clinton staying flat, as clear as can be.
What I think you forget is that while Bush was not well loved, Bill was not either. Polls in June 92 that asked voters to vote as if it was a two way between Bush and Clinton gave it to Bush, even though his approval had dropped into the 30s. The first result on that graph after Perot dropped out had his votes split pretty evenly with Bush’s numbers going up by 15 and Clinton by 13.
Here’s another primary source article, from June '92 in the NYT, that shows how weak they each were.
(Bolding mine.)
How many candidates have won elections when 5 months before election day they have a net favorable of negative 24 (compared to an incumbent also under water but by relatively only 15), are losing on “has leadership qualities” 35 to 61%, and losing on “believes what he says” (honesty) 28 to 37%?
Yup 5 months before the election Clinton had only 16% viewing him favorably, almost 2/3rds not feeling he would be a strong leader, and almost 3/4ths not thinking he was so honest. Worse than Bush on all counts.
Not a recipe for an election night win.
Now no question that Bill Clinton was and is an amazing communicator. Maybe it was just that Perot was sucking all the oxygen out of the room and once he could get some attention he was able to charm the swingers. But maybe Perot’s punches, following up on Buchanan’s jabs, left a Bush too weakened to recover, while Clinton’s message was relatively fresh.
All I know is that when both major party candidates are that weak five months before the election the outcome anything that impacts the course of the national conversation could be what flips the ball to roll into one valley vs another. Perot cemented the sale for change with his “It’s time to throw out the trash and clean the barn.” It seems to me that that is part of how a challenger with those numbers in June is able to be a clear favorite less than 3 months later.
IMHO.
Of course it also illustrates how meaningless polls are at this point for the 2016 election …
amazing how you very conveniently leave out May. Luckily these days its easy to exposesuch omssions. When people see the picture in the link, they’ll know why you left out May.
Seriously, I know it was humiliating for the GOP to begin a 23 year stretch of winning the popular vote once and by a tiny margin. But they’d be much better to themselves if they wanted to learn from their mistakes rather than deny them. Pat Buchanan actually did damage to the GOP. Perot saved a President with horrible fundamentals from Carteresque humiliation. This myth that “Bush didn’t really lose” and that “conservatism actually won” almost seems to be a sacred cow.
Conservatism did win in 1992, although not the way one might expect. The Democrats had to concede to the Reagan Revolution as much as Republicans had to concede to the New Deal. Clinton’s primary issues were tax cuts, the deficit, welfare reform, and crime. Reagan had changed politics so much that Clinton was the leftmost candidate yet running to the right of Richard Nixon.
Yes Derek??
May: Bush 35 (down 9 from April); Perot 35 (up 11 from April); Clinton 25 (unchanged).
Over the course of April to June (4 total subsequent Gallup polls) Bush went steadily down, Perot went steadily up, and Clinton stayed flat at about 25 (with one outlier at 29). Bush’s drop from about 20 points up on his competition to second place pretty much went all to Perot. When Perot dropped out initially and Clinton ran an effective convention he was able to capitalize on the “not-Bush” sentiment getting a huge post-convention bounce taking all that Perot had gathered from Bush and it was never given back.
And this is the bit where all we can do is speculate: would that post-convention bounce from such heavy negatives had been so strong and so enduring if Perot had not been pounding the “clean out the barn” message so hard? Would this acceptance speech have been the one given if the public’s reaction to Perot’s themes had not been in consideration? Would have struck the chords it did as well if the last five months had played out without Perot?
Again, I think Clinton would have won in any case. Presidents take the blame for recessions that occur on their watch and Clinton, unlike Bush, was able to express a “vision thing.” He was (is) relatable. But boy it is hard to look at that graph and not conclude that Perot initially grew by degrading Bush’s already weak support and that the convergence of a very well run Democratic convention aimed at those voters with his initial quitting allowed Clinton to pick up those voters, most of whom stayed with Clinton after Perot returned to the race.
Dang can that guy speechify! 
Perhaps I should’ve said the idea that “conservative Republican Partyism won” is the spin some try to use on that election. You do have a point that Clinton’s election and nomination did validate the so-called Reagan Revolution on economic issues. However, it was not an endorsement but a qualification of the Reagan years: people, while overall for right-of-center economics, were dissatisfied with certain aspects, and for raising taxes on the rich (both Clinton and Perot had that as part of their platforms). On social issues, those two were pro-abortion rights, the GOP was against it, and that loss is why GW Bush toed the line in 2000 on abortion. Another note of interest is that in 1992-1993, the Reagan legacy was being questioned a lot more than his worshipers want anyone to know. (I personally think his policies against Communism was good, I’m mixed on a lot of his economic policies but do think the marginal rates before he came into office were excessive, and I think his social policies were crap)
On crime and welfare were more societal than economic, and one of the reasons Clinton was not only able to get elected, but had such a huge electoral impact, was that by reforming welfare and ending the Democrats’ reputation for being weak on crime, he took those issues off the table, and we never saw revolving door prisons or Willie Horton again.
Good point on bringing Nixon into this, tho for different reasons that you’d expect. In 1968, Nixon, playing off Goldwater’s relative strength in the South, took white working class blue collar types away from the Democrats, and did so by getting them to vote against the seeming pandering of Dems to racial special interests, even tho the GOP was not in the economic interest. In 1992, Bill Clinton, playing off Dukakis’ acceptable showing on the coasts, took wealthy suburbanites away from the GOP, and did so by getting them to vote against the seeming pandering of GOP to religious right special interests, even tho the Democrats were not in their economic interests. Nixon took the south for the GOP for good, Clinton took the Northeast, Great Lake states, and West Coast for the Democrats for good. Yet Nixon continued in the New Deal construct, Clinton in the Reagan Revolution construct. After Nixon, most of the South was never seriously contested, and after Clinton, most of the northeast, west coast and Great Lake states were never seriously contested. Both primed the pump for Reagan and Obama, true believers, to win.
Great observation. I’d never really thought about how the NE got to be so blue given their prosperity, but it makes sense that Bill Clinton helped make the party acceptable to them. Part of it is that the Clinton administration was the first administration to basically take taxing the middle class off the table. There hasn’t been a broad-based middle class tax increase since 1982. The merely well off are also shielded politically. I wonder how the NE would go if Democrats started calling for tax increases on all income tax payers again.
I think you just also gave the reason Dem presidents are for free trade and are relatively Wall Street friendly. Those states are also the states with social liberals: in 1992, Roe almost got overturned in Planned Parenthood vs. Casey, and that I think hurt Bush Sr. a lot there and nationally, especially given Buchanan and Robertson. Dan Quayle and his Murphy Brown bit didn’t help the cause of the GOP. Both Clinton and Perot were pro-abortion rights, why is another reason this idea he “siphoned enough conservatives to cost Bush the election” is bonkers. The tough on crime bit is another reason why Clinton was able to win and keep the NE, WC and GL states permanently Dem: those suburban voters are scared of break-ins and robberies that charactized urban places and their outskirts in the 1970s and 1980s.
OK, the biggest change I see is the post-convention bounce going away, with Carter returning to previous levels of support. And do you have a date on when the ‘lust in my heart’ remark went public? 1976 was a long time ago, and while I remember that tempest in a teapot, I can’t place it closer than sometime in September or October - which is more than you’ve done.
No, in order to dispel the Gennifer Flowers scandal, he and Hillary had to do an interview on TV to rescue his candidacy before the NH primary. He recovered enough to finish second in NH (he’d been polling worse than that, after the Flowers story initially went public) and label himself the ‘comeback kid.’
I was referring to Clinton’s lead in the post-primary horserace, but you proved my point anyway: the 60 Minutes interview helped Clinton’s candidacy, not hurt it.
Carter got asked about the Playboy interview in oneof his debates with Gerry Ford near the end of October. The issue was for November 1976, and the magazine I think comes out two weeks before the month. It does seem that the remark got out there in late September, which was a long enough time after both conventions to account for any bounces, and thus the drop in Carter’s edge appears to come from it. That’s my point: Carter could have known that the Playboy bit wasn’t good for his candidacy; it was a gaffe plain and simple. Clinton didn’t do anything of that sort.
Sorry, but Paula Jones was 1994. Gennifer Flowers was 1992. I know it’s hard to keep the Clinton ‘bimbo eruptions’ straight…
Since you are talking about how the different regions of the U.S. have different values, I think you may like this article. If you don’t want to read the whole thing, scroll down to the map and the descriptions.
I think understanding these different “nations” really helps with understanding the politics of the U.S.
Move them goalposts!
Well, sure, the* interview* helped him, but only after the first nationally-famous Clinton ‘bimbo eruption’ nearly killed Clinton’s candidacy in the cradle.
If a tree falls on your house, the insurance check helps you, but you’d still prefer that the tree hadn’t fallen.
The Gennifer Flowers business was most certainly:
and you can try to nitpick it away, but it’s pretty blatant nitpicking.
The burden’s still on you. There was that one drop as September’s turning into October, but it’s only 4 points - which is within the MOE of a difference up to a sample size of about 1200. So (a) you need to show that the ‘lust in my heart’ business became an issue between the two polls, and (b) you need to show that that was what made the difference - which you can’t because it could just be sampling error.
More goalpost moving. Gaffes count, bimbo eruptions don’t.
Dude, you’re embarrassing yourself.
There is a qualitative difference between a mid-campaign gaffe and the mid-campaign emergence of previously committed behavior.
Derek,
I am still as curious now as I was in my response to you above in post #50 about what the heck you were seeing in the curve that I was somehow conveniently omitting, to be exposed by you … a graph that pretty unequivocally demonstrates Perot going up as Bush went down with Clinton flat until the confluence of Perot quitting (temporarily) just as Clinton shined his best, perhaps ever, at the Democratic convention … resulting in those Perot supporters accepting Clinton’s invitation to “join us, and together we will revitalize America.”
