[[Image:92-main.jpg|right|thumb|300px|Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush]] In the '''1992 presidential election''', [[President]] [[George H. W. Bush]] stood for reelection. He had received strong support for the way he had handled foreign relations during his term in office, but the economy had slumped. Bush had the confidence of the [[Republican Party]], which nominated him for reelection after he easily brushed aside a campaign by [[Pat Buchanan]]. The [[Democratic Party|Democrats]], after a more protracted primary season, nominated young Arkansas Governor [[Bill Clinton]], as their candidate. Clinton and his wife [[Hillary Rodham Clinton]] who promised "two for the price of one" perpetrated a myth that he was a [[Rhodes Scholar]] and she a "defender of children".<ref>Hillary Clinton successfully defended a 41 year old pedophile who raped a 12 year old girl whom she knew to be guilty. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e2f13f2awK4 The Hillary Clinton Tapes].</ref> Wealthy oil-businessman named [[Ross Perot]] also ran as an independent bringing together a new [[Reform Party]]. The candidates appeared in several live televised [[Presidential Debates]], which included not only the two major party candidates but also the sometimes quirky, but very charismatic, Perot who proved to have a "folksy" delivery that gave him a strong following. Clinton won a majority of the [[Electoral College]] despite receiving only a [[plurality]] of the popular vote after Perot was able to garner almost 20% of the vote.
==Campaign==
Bush enjoyed historically high approval ratings after his decisive military victory in [[Operation Desert Storm]] in 1991, but that had evaporated by the time of the election. Ironically, the fall of the [[Berlin Wall]] and collapse of the [[Soviet Union]] under Bush's Presidency hurt him in his reelection campaign in that it resulted in foreign policy not being a prominent issue, with no Soviet threat. The campaign focused almost entirely on domestic concerns and an economy that was believed to still be in a recession.
A prominently placed sign in Clinton’s Clinton's campaign headquarters read "It’s the economy, stupid!" Bill Clinton ran a different, more youthful campaign, by making frequent appearances on MTV and daytime talk-shows, and took questions from live [[audience]]s, which proved to be a comfortable setting for him. He distanced himself from past Democratic Party candidates like [[George McGovern]], [[Walter Mondale]] and [[Michael Dukakis]], by running as a centrist. He cited the ticket’s ticket's support of the [[death penalty]], a balanced budget, middle class [[tax]] cuts and a desire to "end [[welfare]] as we know it." Clinton had baggage of avoiding the [[Vietnam War]] , illegally failing to report for the draft, and past drug use, but the press [[mainstream media]] didn't push those themes and disenchantment with Bush won out.
According to Wikipedia, Bill Clinton engaged in [[voter suppression]] by appearing at several Massachusetts polling locations, which caused voters hours of delay and inhibited traffic.<ref>http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/2016/03/01/did-bill-clinton-violate-election-rules-venturing-into-polling-location/PH4FIH9jCKYKf6Fzyvfz2N/story.html</ref> Clinton was allegedly electioneering within 150 feet of the polling locations, which is also illegal according to Massachusetts state law.<ref>http://www.medfordma.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/12/ELECTIONSummary.pdf</ref> George H. W. Bush trailed in the polls for the entire campaign. Several of his speeches and political ads focused on the [[Gulf War]], fall of the [[Berlin Wall]] and experience to illustrate his success as commander in chief, but his message did little to help his standing.
Bush was widely blamed for a downturn in the economy that did not actually happen.<ref> After the election, economic numbers came out showing that the recession had actually ended before the election, but the public did not have this information when they voted.</ref> Worse, he was held responsible by conservative voters for reneging on his pledge, '"Read my lips - no lips—no new taxes'". He agreed to a major tax hike. More moderate and less charismatic than Reagan, Bush had no personal following could do little to find an issue to energize his party or the American people. In the debates he stressed the idea of the American people giving him a Republican Congress to work with, which at the time seemed out of touch as the Democrats enjoyed large leads in both the House and the Senate. His campaign never caught fire. Attempts to paint Clinton as a tax-and-spend liberal governor with no foreign policy experience didn't resonate. Bush never found a way to deal with Perot.
In Ross Perot’s Perot's surprisingly strong third-party campaign he ran as a crusading expert--a expert—a successful businessman--who businessman—who was qualified to fix the economy and the huge federal budget deficits. Perot argued that defits deficits were a kind of corruption, and represented a failure that could no longer be tolerated. He damaged the Bush campaign by asserting that the economy was worse then than it was and giving disenchanted voters who didn't want to support Clinton a protest vote.
==Results==
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<ref> httphttps://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,260688,00.html </ref>
==Analysis==
The 1992 election was unique for a number of reasons: a perception that economic conditions were worse than they actually were, which harmed incumbent President Bush; a strong third-party candidate in Perot who won over alienated conservatives by arguing 12 years of Republican rule had only raised the deficit; and, perhaps most importantly, Bill Clinton's ability to unite not only the Democratic Party, but a number of heterogeneous coalitions, much as [[Franklin Roosevelt]], also a consummate politician, did in the [[New Deal Coalition]] after 1932.<ref> Seymour Martin Lipset, "The Significance of the 1992 Election." ''PS: Political Science & Politics'' 1993 26(1): 7-16. 1049-0965 </ref>
==Further reading==