I was thinking about this yesterday, and I realized that I was too young (eight) to be into politics at the time. Why didn’t George Bush Sr. get re-elected? I’m guessing failure to stick to the “no new takes” claim couldn’t have helped, but what were some of the other reasons?
Er, no new taxes. Got to proofread…
Your question almost screams to be in Great Debates, bcause it’s hard to give a factual answer. But that’s never stopped me before. Here are some of the theories:
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Conservative mistrust. A lot of conservative Republicans never felt comfortable with GHWB. As a result, they either didn’t vote, or didn’t energize others to get out and vote.
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Ross Perot. Many political analysts believe the Perot candidacy took more votes away from Bush than Clinton. Some of them believe that had Perot not run, Bush would have won (Clinton only reeived, IIRC, about 43% of the popular vote.)
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The economy. The U.S. had experienced one of its periodic economic slumps, and although it was recovering by the election, many people were ready to vote for someone else.
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Energized Democrats. The Democrats hadn’t held the Presidency since 1980, and they worked harder to win.
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“The Vision Thing.” Not my words, but GHWB himself. Despite a long record of public service, many voters felt that Bush had never adequately explained what he wanted to DO as President. In 1988 that wasn’t a problem, because people saw him as the heir to the Reagen platform. But four years later, they were asking, “what now?”
There’s no simple answer why a popular incumbant President would fail to win re-election. More likely, it was a little of this, a little of that.
IMO, the only allowable answer in GQ revolves around who had more votes and the electoral college. Anything else is supposition about an unknown number of factors of unknown importance that interact in unknown ways.
It’s been awhile since my last Poly Sci class (hell, going on 8 years now) but it was my understanding that Bush Sr. was also a victim of a massive youth voting campaign.
In 1992, Bush was basically Your Father’s Oldsmobile. At the time, MTV was really pumping along on their youth-oriented Rock the Vote campaign, and the only candidate to truly take advantage of that was Bill Clinton. Clinton had at least two “town meeting” style forums on MTV, and generally reached out to the young voters like no other candidate did. Additionally, Clinton was no TV neophyte – he took (and still takes) to television cameras like a duck to water, and appearances on Arsenio Hall and The Tonight Show helped bolster his position.
Meanwhile, Bush seemed a victim of his own station in life. I remember his flummoxed reaction to seeing a grocery store price scanner for the first time, and being quite amazed by its “cutting-edge technology.” This obviously didn’t help him relate to Joe Voter in any meaningful way, and by November, it was obvious he’d no intention of affecting any great change in this country. Remember, at the time gays in the military and unified health care were hot-button topics – both of which Clinton promised to tackle upon election. Bush kept his head down and remained non-committal, which I believe poisoned voters’ beliefs in him.
Add these other factors to the woodpile, and Bush didn’t stand a chance. The Democratic television machine was on a roll, and the better man won.
That scanner thing?
http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh012904.shtml
“As has long since become clear, Bush’s “supposed” fascination with a supermarket scanner was an invention of a New York Times pool reporter.”
Peruse also http://slate.msn.com/id/2000185/
H. Ross Perot.
Perot grabbed 19% of the vote, and did strongest in the midwest and south - typically Republican strongholds. There was a lot of malaise among the right in 1992, and Perot formed a major split.
It’s similar to Nader’s effect in 2000.
Nader’s effect in 2000 was hardly worth noticing. I doubt much would have turned out differently if he had not won. Perot’s effect in 1992 was very dramatic, though. He remains one of the most successful third party presidential candidates of the century.
I attribute it largely to Perot, as well.
Perot’s populist barnstorming came out of left field and took a lot of people by surprise. I think his very presence as an outsider, and an angry one at that, convinced a lot of people to find discontent with the Bush Sr administration that they might not otherwise have felt. In so doing, he stole an awful lot of swing votes that probably would have gone to Bush. After all, the people who voted for Clinton were those who already disapproved of George the First. But those who didn’t especially hate Bush but didn’t want to vote for Clinton now had another alternative to think about.
Just my $0.02 worth.
Nader won 97,488 votes in Florida, and the final difference between Bush and Gore was 537. If Nader had not run, would many of those vote have gone to Gore? I think so.
There were a series of incidents that made him look out of touch. In addition to the scranner thing, he threwup during a lunch/dinner in Japan and had a heart murmer episode.
There was a hugh patriotic bubble right after Gulf I, then conservatives starting complaining we had our chance to get Saddam and didn’t do it. Gulf veterans came home and many said they had some sort of mystery ailment which the government totally denied. The bubble burst as quickly as it had formed.
Also, don’t forget the weekly Dana Carvey impressions on SNL. Dana caught something about Bush the public had not noticed before and whatever it was, it was silly, it was funny and it made Bush look like a moron. Many couldn’t see Bush without his image reminding them of Dana’s impression of him.
BTW, Bush loved Carvey’s impersonation of him. Carvey was invited to spend the night at the White House during Bush’s lame duck period after the election. They even played a prank on the Secret Service. Carvey called them and asked a series of more and more ridiculous questions until they realized that they’d been had.
Haj
I want to state for the record that this is just my opinion, albeit an opinion that I reached after careful consideration of the information I managed to glean at the time.
I think he was tired of the job. I also think that his elder son is tired of it too.
George Herbert Walker Bush, the 41st President of the United States, just couldn’t get his ass up to campaign to keep his job. I believe that he had gotten so worn out dealing with foreign affairs, including Iran, Iraq, and Nicaraqua, and who the hell knows what else that he just didn’t want to deal with it anymore. Of course, this is all meaniningless blather all under my assumption that GHWB was, as I suspect, acting as de facto President for at least the last half of Reagan’s second term, and posibly longer.
He never mounted any sort of political effort. That may have been because all of the first tier Democrats, like Mario Cuomo, had declined to run because they didn’t think they could beat his 61% approval rating, and he may have figured that he didn’t have to run hard against nobodies like William Jefferson Clinton. Whatever it was, he didn’t run. He didn’t try.
I think GWB is tired of the job too. The last three years can’t have been comfortable for the man in the hottest seat there is. I can’t decide if his noticeable lack of response to Democrat attacks is a sign of fatigue in the Presidency, or a genuine desire to quit and lay down the sword, or a just a reasonable plan to wait until there’s actually one Democrat candidate to try cases with.
I suspect the first, but I’m anticipating the last.
The Perot thing was interesting. There were are lot of people who got fed up with Bush I and weren’t very inclined to vote Democratic. So they aligned with Perot in the polls. But then Perot dropped out. Since they had already decided against Bush I, they now seriously considered Clinton. Perot got back in, but he had lost a lot of credibility and didn’t get many voters back. The lines in the tracking polls from May to July of 92 reflect this.
But in truth:
“It’s the economy, stupid.”
That’s all there was to it.
(However, Perot’s antics so angered the Republicans that they went all out in 2000 to destroy his party and were quite successful.)
For those of you who don’t remember the election, someone - I believe it was James Carville - posted a sign at Clinton campaign headquarters that read “it’s the economy, stupid.”
This was never an official campaign or ad slogan, just a reminder to the troops that the “killer ap” of the election would be the state of the economy.
While Perot’s influence certainly was huge - it’s hard to take 19 percentage points out of an election without a major effect - the success of his run was also premised on the economy. Remember all those charts and graphs he kept flashing?
Why the economy was perceived to be so bad is complex and probably beyond the bounds of GQ. All I can say is that in 1988 I went around saying that I almost hoped that Bush would be elected, because whoever held office for the next four years would be the one blamed for the collapse of the economy, no matter that it was predicated on the previous eight years, and that if the Democrats won the perception that it was their fault would keep them out of the White House for another 20 years.
I would not be at all surprised if history repeated itself this year, as the perception of the economy today is as unfavorable to the Republicans as it was back in 1992. And the economy is almost always the major voting issue in the U.S. as long as war is not active or, well, imminent.
I think it was a combination of all of the above things. Plus, Dan Quayle didn’t help matters. Bush ran one of the most inept campaigns in my memory, and I’ve been following politics since 1976. For example, when Bush was being hammered for being aloof and out of touch (the supermarket scanner thing is an example), he actually came up with a slogan: “Message: I care”. How lame is that? Hey, look! A memo from the President! He cares about us.
It takes a lot to unseat a sitting president. In that case, it was all the factors people have mentioned. A weak economy, the Perot factor, a terrible campaign, Quayle, going up against the best natural politician I’ve ever seen in Bill Clinton, etc.
If any of those factors had changed, Bush would probably have won a second term.
Bingoe.
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General questions is for questions with factual answers. So yeah, the GQ answer is Bush didn’t get enough electoral votes. I doubt that’s what the OP is looking for, so I’ll move this to Great Debates.
Off to Great Debates.
Dr Matrix - GQ Moderator
Bush was suffering from a thyroid condition at the time of the campaign. He often complained of being tired and winded due to the illness, though he has since recovered and now seems quite vigorous for a man nearing 80.
Also the sudden death of Bush’s 1988 campaign guru Lee Atwater, from a brain tumor, before the campaign, was a huge blow to Bush. Atwater wrote the book on conservative Republican hardball campaigning. The 1988 campaign was often dirty, and at times sleazy, but in the end Bush whipped that “card carrying ACLU member” from Massachusetts who let Willie Horton loose - and Atwater was that campaigns mastermind. Atwater would have done a even better number on Clinton.
Atwater converted before he died