Bill Clinton presidential campaign, 1992

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Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign for President of the United States was a critical turning point for the Democratic Party, which had controlled the White House for only four of the previous twenty-four years. Initially viewed as an unlikely prospect to win his party's nomination, Clinton did so and went on to defeat incumbent President George H. W. Bush, who had been viewed as politically invincible just a year earlier.

1 Before the election
2 Primaries
3 The Southern Lock
4 President Bush's popularity
5 General election
6 Campaign Platform
7 See also
8 External links

[edit] Before the election

Bill Clinton was the Governor of Arkansas before the election. He served five terms. He toyed with the idea of seeking the nomination in 1988, but declined. He announced his candidacy on October 3, 1991 outside the Old State House in Little Rock, Arkansas. On December 20th, Governor Mario Cuomo of New York announced that he would not run for president.

[edit] Primaries

The candidates in 1992 were considered one of the weakest starting grids the Democrats had ever chosen. Most of this was due to President George H.W. Bush's sky-high approval ratings in the wake of Operation Desert Storm. The press anointed front-runners for 1992 included Bill Bradley, then a New Jersey Senator, Jesse Jackson, who finished second in 1988, Dick Gephardt, Al Gore, and Jay Rockefeller, a Senator from West Virginia. But each bowed out early. Neither Bradley nor Rockefeller considered themselves ready to run, Gephardt seemed to accept Bush's re-election as a sure thing, and Gore had opted to spend more time with his family in the wake of a tragic accident that threatened the life of his young son. The most notable front-runner Mario Cuomo, decided not to run on December 20, 1991, the final day to apply to run in the New Hampshire primary.

When the early straw polls were finished, Bill Clinton was the candidate on the rise. The other primary contenders were Douglas Wilder, Bob Kerrey, Tom Harkin, Paul Tsongas, and Edmund G. Brown. Clinton's victory in the Florida straw poll over Harkin made him the early front-runner in the post-Cuomo vacuum.

In the recent past, the Iowa caucus had been the launching pad for candidacies. But since Harkin was himself an Iowa Senator, attention turned to New Hampshire. In January 1992, Clinton led Tsongas by a solid 16 points with nobody else even close. But Clinton was undone by two damaging stories that cut against his credibility. The first was the accusation of an affair by Gennifer Flowers, a former night club singer and television reporter from Little Rock, Arkansas. Clinton blunted this story with an excellent interview on 60 Minutes at the conclusion of Super Bowl XXVI. The story that caused Clinton greater damage, however, was the notion that he had 'dodged the draft' in order to avoid military service in the Vietnam War. The draft story put Clinton in what pollster Stan Greenberg called 'meltdown.' Clinton lost nearly twenty points in less than a week. But the formation of the War Room helped Clinton overcome his troubles and finish second behind Tsongas. Clinton was even able to write off Tsongas' win by claiming that Tsongas' home in Lowell, Massachusetts actually meant Tsongas should have won. Newsweek brilliantly captured the press coverage of the 1992 New Hampshire primary by printing a cartoon with Clinton and Pat Buchanan, the runner-up who gave George H. W. Bush a scare on the Republican side, with second place medals on top of a victory stand while Bush and Tsongas stood with gold medals off to the side pouting.

Bob Kerrey then emerged as the survivor of the Harkin-Kerrey Midwest elimination by winning the South Dakota caucus. Clinton then took the lead in the primary season by winning Georgia. Clinton then won most of the rest of the primaries facing eliminated or diminished competition. Clinton's advisors felt he won the nomination when Jerry Brown upset Tsongas in the Maryland primary. Brown later upset Clinton in the Connecticut primary, but Clinton's road was relatively easy after the March 3, 1992 win in Georgia.

[edit] The Southern Lock

A source of frustration for Democrats through the years was the increasingly Republican lock on the electoral votes of the Southern United States. Clinton's home of Arkansas gave Democrats hope that they could carry some Southern states and ultimately win the election. Clinton then made what even his opponents acknowledged was a master stroke by choosing Al Gore, a Senator from Tennessee, as his running mate. This choice blunted a major strategy of the Bush campaign to paint Clinton and Gore as 'Northern liberals' in the mold of previous candidates George McGovern, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, and, to a lesser extent, Hubert Humphrey. And Gore's prior military record removed a lot of the criticism Clinton had received earlier.

Besides Gore, several names were rumored to be in contention for the second spot, including Kerrey, Florida Senator and former Governor of Florida Bob Graham, Indiana Congressman Lee Hamilton, Nebraska Senator and former Governor Bob Kerrey, and newly elected Pennsylvania Senator Harris Wofford.

[edit] President Bush's popularity

In 1991, the incumbent president, George Bush, was extremely popular after the Persian Gulf War. His approval rating was above 90 percent at one point in 1991 because his war had helped erase the Vietnam Syndrome America had felt since the 1960s. But because of a growing public perception of an economic downturn, Bush's popularity began falling throughout 1992. This opened the door for the campaign of independent candidate Ross Perot, who led most polls through May and then Clinton/Gore after Perot had faltered (by dropping out of the race and then re-entering and by selecting a Vice Presidential candidate (James Stockdale) many viewed as not ready for "prime time".

[edit] General election

Clinton won the election with 370 electoral votes and 45 million votes, to Bush's 168 electoral votes and 39 million votes, and Perot's 0 electoral votes and 20 million votes. The conventional wisdom is that Perot's candidacy took an almost equivalent number of votes from Bush and Clinton, comprised of people who did not wish to re-elect Bush but were also unsure of Clinton.