The Election of 1992

The Election of 1992

Clinton Elected

Governor Bill Clinton (D-Arkansas) was sworn in as the forty-second president of the United States on 20 January 1993, after a close race against the Republican incumbent George Bush. The victory was most surprising because of President Bush's

popularity. Nevertheless, a slowing economy during the intervening months and a cutthroat three-way race among Clinton, Bush, and H. Ross Perot (I) allowed the victor to take office with 43.3 percent of the vote, while Bush garnered 37.7 percent and Perot took 19 percent. Clinton was a masterful campaigner and Bush failed to adequately defend his presidency. There was also a large measure of luck. Niccolo Machiavelli wrote in The Prince (1513) that one-half of success is based on ability and one-half on fortune (luck). Clinton's election in 1992 was a dramatic illustration of Machiavelli's observations—both ability and luck played critical roles.

The Campaign Staff

The foremost factor in Clinton's election was an especially talented and aggressive campaign staff led by James Carville, who recognized that the most critical issue for American voters was the economy. He hung a sign at campaign headquarters in Little Rock, Arkansas, which read: "It's the economy, stupid!" That slogan came to epitomize the central theme of the campaign and of the Clinton administration over the next eight years. The economy was in a slowdown after flying high in the 1980s; unemployment was higher than it had been since 1984; the Soviet menace was removed with the crumbling of the Berlin Wall in 1989; and the Persian Gulf War had stabilized relations in the Middle East. Safe from an international threat, Americans were concerned with their pocket-books. The Clinton campaign, more than its opponents, recognized the longing of many Americans for domestic tranquility and prosperity. The campaign staff also masterfully used the latest in communication technology to disseminate their message. They made use of fax machines and e-mail to rapidly communicate with the news media and campaign staffers around the country. Proficiency in the new technology gave Clinton and his staff a great advantage over their opponents' slower response mechanisms. Rumors could be, and were, squelched by rapid-fire, mass-fax responses, which prevented the media from being gatekeepers. Clinton's campaign staff was later rewarded: he made George R. Stephanopoulos, his Deputy Campaign Manager and Director of Communications, the Senior Adviser for Policy and Strategy; Dee Dee Myers became the first female White House press secretary; and longtime friend and adviser, Thomas "Mack" McLarty, became Chief of Staff. Carville, however, declined to take a position in the administration. Clinton's brilliant campaign staff did not fare well as part of his administration and before his first term was up, he found it necessary to replace almost all of the 1992 staffers and Arkansas cronies with more seasoned Washington politicians.

Bush

The second factor in Clinton's win was President Bush's style. Bush had a stellar resume: war hero, businessman, congressman, diplomat, vice president, and president. What he lacked was charisma—something both of his 1992 opponents had in abundance. His self-professed understated style was further reinforced by the lackluster campaign his staff ran. Not expecting to have any real competition, it was unprepared for the hard-hitting, aggressive style of campaigning waged by Clinton, whose staff painted Bush as an internationalist who knew more about foreign affairs than about the domestic struggles of common Americans. His aristocratic background and preppy demeanor did little to negate the images of Bush's aloofness in the average voter's mind. Clinton's down-home image—he grew up in the little town of Hope, Arkansas—was played up. Even his ivy-league education (B.A., Georgetown University, 1968; Rhodes Scholar, Oxford University, 1968-1970; and LL.B., Yale Law School, 1973) was portrayed as "the poor boy makes good"—a modern-day version of the Horatio Alger myth. Americans were cajoled into believing Clinton was just a "good ole boy." When he selected another baby boomer from the South, Senator Al Gore (D-Tennessee), as his running mate, observers hailed the tandem as the "Bubba" ticket, even though Gore had spent most of his life in Washington, D.C., as son of former senator Albert Gore Sr. The election was largely a campaign of image, not substance. Clinton created it; Carville sold it. Bush tried to recover by firing his campaign manager, but it was too late. Without the assistance of Harvey Leroy "Lee" Atwater, the master-mind of negative campaign tactics, who had died in 1991, Bush struggled while Perot hammered him about breaking his promise not to raise taxes, and Clinton painted him as a "wimp." Unable to deflect these attacks with a humorous quip like President Ronald Reagan used to do, Bush was left with the undeserved image of being untrustworthy, and Clinton won the election as another "teflon" president.

Perot

H. Ross Perot was a self-made billionaire iconoclast whose forays in politics included working for the freedom of American POWs in Vietnam, organizing a prison rescue mission in Iran, and spearheading a war on drugs in Texas. Sensing the alienation among many voters with the two major political parties, Perot organized United We Stand America as a platform for pressing his agenda and for a run for the presidency. His unorthodox views and methods made him attractive to the independent voter. Though Perot's 19 percent share of the total vote was not sufficiently strong in any single state to garner him any electoral votes, it was strong enough to influence the outcome of the election by seizing votes from Bush. Many observers believed that Bush would have won had Perot not been the "spoiler." Without Bush to attack, Perot turned his criticism on Clinton, remaining a thorn in his side through to the 1996 election, when he again challenged for the presidency under the banner of a newly formed Reform Party. Bush retired to his home in Kennebunkport, Maine, leaving a power vacuum in the Republican Party leadership that was quickly seized by Representative Newton Leroy "Newt" Gingrich (R-Georgia), who became a powerful foe of Clinton. In the end Clinton discovered, like many before him, that getting elected and governing are two different games.

Sources:

John William Cavanaugh, Media Effects on Voters: A Panel Study of the 1992 Presidential Election (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1995).

Michael Nelson, ed., The Election of 1992 (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1993).