Do you think there was a way George H.W. Bush could have won in 1992?

[bluestateguy]

I look back on that election, and I think it is possible. The economy was technically out of recession, though hardly thriving; one problem was that Bush was very slow to get his campaign off the ground; he dragged his feet and was notoriously low energy when he finally did kick his campaign into gear.

I also think dumping Dan Quayle and replacing him with another conservative could have helped him too.

[zazen]

1. sure--if he had kept Ross Perot out of the race n/t

[CTyankee]

6. You are probably right. Clinton won the presidency in a plurality.

On the other hand, Clinton was the more attractive candidate and some people were just tired of the Republicans.

Of course, we'll never know. :shrug:

[joeybee12]

38. No, they've done studies, and in a two-man race, Clinto still would win...

...probably by even more.

[CTyankee]

39. Good to know. My right wing BIL keeps saying that Clinton ONLY won because

Perot ran...

[2Design]

22. I voted for perot and would NEVER vote for Bush - not sure if I would

have voted clinton or just not voted for pres - that is the last time I will vote third party

[Johonny]

31. or named him his VP

[Lyric]

2. Yeah--if he hadn't pissed off his own party so much that Perot

was able to siphon off a big chunk of his base. Yeah, Perot cut into our voters too...but not as much as with his.

:shrug:

[JamesA1102]

35. Not true.

http://www.leinsdorf.com/perot.htm

[MrScorpio]

3. There was no way in Hell that he was going to get reelected

Everyone and I mean EVERYONE was fed up with his bullshit.

Two goddamned wars, the S&L crisis, his tax raises and lies about EVERYTHING.

All sides wanted his ass OUT!

PS: Perot was the icing on the cake... Because the wingers wanted NOTHING to do with Pappy Bush

[stevedeshazer]

12. That's pretty much how I remember it.

Perot brought up the Reagan/Bush deficit, got a lot of publicity for it, and pulled almost 20% in the 92 general election. Those Perot supporters were a lot like today's teabaggers. They killed Pappy Bush and Bill Clinton won by default.

[blm]

19. No way in hell Bush WANTED to be re-elected. He was facing certain impeachment

knowing full well the BCCI report was coming out in Dec 1992 and Dem senate would be holding hearings on the report.

So....his pal (and fellow BCCI figure) Jackson Stephens had his boy in Arkansas ready to step into the WH and would spend the rest of the 90s protecting them both.

[TheBigotBasher]

4. "No new taxes" was his downfall.

George H Bush walked in on the back of the "success" of Reagan. Relatively low inflation, a booming economy for a lot of people (people forgot about the unemployed), lower taxes (people believed tehy were lower even though they got raised) and a reborn American pride.

The break up of the Soviet Union, Tiananmen Square, the fall of the Berlin wall, all helped to secure in the mind that the ideas of the right had won.

GH Bush wanted to control the deficit and walked back on no new taxes. That became unforgivable. Then as with a bad relationship the bad things previously ignored during the good days became issues. Unemployment. The poor. Health care. Even the old Reagan scandals re-emerged and started biting away at Poppy. There is a saying in politics. The opposition does not win elections, the government loses them. GH Bush confirmed that and even his Iraq victory was not going to save him. By that point the US had grown tired

[saltpoint]

5. Possibly, although he was then and is now one of the most

clueless and unappealing human beings to ever get up and walk out of the slime.

Quayle was a joke right from the start and became fodder for late-night talk show one-liners. Poppy did himself no favors by pretending that Dan Quayle was a public servant.

[Bluebear]

7. Not flailing his arms around calling Al Gore "ozone man". He sounded like a nut.

[BeFree]

8. They learned their lesson, eh?

8 years later they had to steal it back, and that after Whitewater where they spent $80 million to investigate a blowjob.

Cheney, Rumsfeld et al, learned how to do it illegally because they sure as hell couldn't do it on the up and up.

[Orrex]

10. I think you're exaggerating

I believe it was a paltry $40M for the blowjob. Wasn't the first $40M for a non-illegal real estate deal on which the Clintons lost money?

I could be wrong, though--there was so much dirty money behind the investigation that it's really hard to keep track.

[BeFree]

11. Whatever

They exaggerated it so they could cause confusion and steal everything not nailed down.

Biggest bunch of crooks, ever.

[Orrex]

13. Oh, absolutely.

I was kind of riffing a joke on the basic premise of your post, which was their outright and unabashed theft of everything from floor to rafters.

[BeFree]

17. That's what I was hoping

You were joking around.

My one overriding political goal is to make sure those bastards never get in position to screw us again.

[Orrex]

9. I don't know about that, but...

I sure would have liked him more in retrospect if he'd sent his sons on permanent assignment somewhere in Yurp.

[alfredo]

14. He didn't have that fire in the belly. Clinton would have beaten

him any way. Clinton was the golden boy. His campaign was without peer. The real moral majority was behind him: the women.

[Maccagirl]

20. They say you can indict a ham sandwich

A ham sandwich could have beaten G H W Bush in 1992. The Clinton crowd actually thought they were something special. I watched the War Room and was never impressed with Jimmy the C and Steph. The Perot factor is overblown too-those folks would have just stayed home.

[alfredo]

21. Clinton's personality carried the day. I have seen lichen with

more personality than GHWB.

[Jennicut]

25. Bush was boring, Clinton was interesting. Also, there had been 12 years of Rethug rule.

People were ready for....change!

[blm]

29. He ran against a sitting president who didn't WANT to win.

If he did, he would have faced certain hearings on the BCCI report...and certain impeachment.

[HughBeaumont]

30. A Bewsh . . . get impeached ?

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

That event, 41 OR 43, had about as much chance of happening as me becoming pope.

Being a Bewsh means you can get away with being as big a criminal as possible and all you would get was "away with it". Oh, and a few more Saudi connections made.

[blm]

34. Back then at least 60% of media was still doing its job. Had the people known more about BCCI

they would have paid more attention to growing terrorist networks and WHO was funding them, and they would have given the fascist agenda, including WalMart's fascism, a closer look, too.

This country would have been better off if GHWBush had won, because, BCCI and the public hearings on it would have assured some greater accountability, and (at the very least) greater exposure. No Bush would have been able to get NEAR the WH after that.

No Bush2. No 9-11. No Iraq war.

[HughBeaumont]

36. Yep. We still had Dan Rather before he was forced out.

Don't think Poppy wasn't still salty after having been made an idiot to millions of viewers.

This was before they bought everything starting in 1996.

The BCCI was bad news and certainly would have stained him, but so was the S&L and Iran-Contra. I/C was widely exposed, the S&L not so much, since it was too complex for the average individual to get. Both of those involved Bewshes of some sort, but like BCCI, everyone powerful involved more or less remained untouched.

41 not winning certainly avoided him a lot of future mess. I wouldn't have been optimistic about impeachment since he has a lot of powerful friends.

[blm]

37. S&Ls, IranContra and CIA drugrunning stories were all PART of BCCI. The dots would've

finally connected during hearings. NYT was just starting to piece it together, and Lawrence Walsh was, too. Remember he finally got access to Bush's journal? The new SHINE of Clinton really helped with the BLINDING of America. Just as intended. Jackson Stephens knew what he was doing, didn't he?

[Ozymanithrax]

15. Offering the VP slot to Perot...or removing him from the election completely.

Bush I lost because Ross Perot drew a lot votes. Without Perot, the dynamic would have been very different. Many of the Democrats who voted for Perot were Reagan Democrats and would have voted for Bush. He would have grnered most of the Republicans for Perot.

Clinton won that election with a plurality, and he has Perot to thank for that.

[havocmom]

16. He coulda pulled it off..

if those computer voting machines had been in widespread use. All ya gotta do to win elections is be a front man for the corporations counting the votes, or of their client corporations.

[Yupster]

18. There are some elections that were just going to be

and others where either side could have won.

I think the 1992 race was one of those that either side could have won.

Dumping Quayle would have helped. Maybe it could have kept Perot out too. Bush just didn't work nearly as hard as Clinton did either.

So I think Bush could have won, but it didn't happen.

What about the other type of election?

Bob Dole had no chance of beating Clinton in 1996. It didn't matter what he did. I think he pretty much knew it too.

[Jennicut]

23. I was 16 in 1992. The biggest thing I remember was that Poppy came off as uncaring.

He was unemotional, detached, bored, and unexciting. Perot helped Clinton as well, and Clinton appealed to some of the younger voters way better the Bush did. I really wished I could have voted back then. That was my first foray into politics. My Dad voted for Perot, my Mom voted for Bush, and I wanted Clinton to win.

[blm]

28. It's easy to accept that Clinton just overwhelmed him, but, the truth is Poppy didn't WANT to win

and face certain impeachment over the BCCI report that would be released in Dec 1992.

Jackson Stephens (longtime friend of GHWBush and a key BCCI figure) made sure most of the country and NONE of you younger folk would get the opportunity to learn more about the seriousness of BCCI - he bankrolled Clinton's primary campaign and Clinton spent the 90s deepsixing BCCI matters.

[treestar]

24. Maybe, if Perot had not run

Perot undoubtedly took some of the libertarian and business type right wing. I remember all those who thought his business acumen meant he could run the country, and trying to point out to them that a businessman running a company had way more control and Perot would not know how to deal with congress not having to do his bidding.

[begin_within]

26. Do you think there was a way George W. Bush could have won in 2000 and 2004?

Looking at the maps and vote counts I just can't see a way.

[Ardent15]

40. Brilliant

Great.

[JVS]

27. 1) Not doing new taxes. 2) Keeping Perot out of the race by not getting Nafta ready to go.

3) Fighting the recession actively and not taking the bait on the deficit. You cut deficits when things are good. 4) Make it look like the post-cold-war peace dividend was actually making us better off (i.e. some social spending, maybe a health care system)

The Iraq war had gone very well for him, and it wouldn't have been hard for him to parlay that into a win at home if here were not seen as having no interest in the domestic arena.

[HughBeaumont]

32. I'd like to think the young vote, Alex P Keaton's influence aside, killed his chances also.

The late 80s/early 90s were really bad times for college graduates and students. I had to keep the minimum wage job I had throughout the early 90s and for college completion because there were absolutely NO better paying jobs to be had anywhere.

I voted for Perot twice because of Clinton's love for free trade and "teh free marketz". I'm from a blue collar family that saw many strikes and layoffs thanks to bad Repub economic practices. I, of course, vote straight Dem ticket now.

[mod mom]

33. I have heard from an attorney who worked on Bob Dole's campaign, that during the primary

votes were fixed by Sununu to give HW an upset that later lead to his nomination. I personally know this man and this episode changed him from a staunch Republican to a left leaning (against the Money Party wing of the Dem Party and their dirty antics) Democrat.