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Old 02-10-2022, 07:19 AM
 
14,300 posts, read 14,091,541 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MJoseph42286 View Post
The biggest mistake Old Man Bush made was not taking the political capital that came from the Gulf War and reinvesting it into something on the domestic front. Maybe getting a jobs bill passed. Something that would have helped the economy. He got a false sense of security after the war.
Many republican presidents in the past essentially felt that being a "good foreign policy president" was the same thing as being a "good president". In the past, many have lacked much of a domestic policy agenda believing that those sorts of things should be "left to the states".

The reality is that people in this country nowadays expect the President to become involved in domestic policy and are not going to give a President much credit for intervening in problems in say the Philippines or Panama (something Bush Sr. did).
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Old 02-10-2022, 12:45 PM
 
Location: Middle America
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He didn't handle the stress of the job well. I remember him getting to the point of being annoyed at everyone and everything. People got tired of him. It was especially noticeable following after his jokey predecessor.

Last edited by Thoreau424; 02-10-2022 at 01:07 PM..
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Old 02-14-2022, 12:22 PM
 
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No. I remember how tried of him people were by then and how unfavorably he was viewed in the media at the time. To me, it really felt like he was on his way out the door by the end of his first term. It didn't help much that he didn't even seem like he cared anymore by that point, as if he didn't really even WANT the job any longer.
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Old 06-08-2022, 10:51 AM
 
145 posts, read 83,425 times
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People still push the ”Perot cost Bush the election” myth. That is not true. All you need to do is examine the polls. After Perot dropped out just before the Democratic National Convention, Clinton opened up a 22 point lead over Bush. In every single poll from the time of the Democratic National Convention through the end of September, Clinton let Bush anywhere from 15 to 25 points, except for a very brief period after the Republican National Convention, when it briefly closed to the high single digits. It only started to tighten again after Perot got back into the race.

If you look at the polls, Bush's numbers stayed in a very narrow range, between a low of 31% and a high of 38%. He finished with 37.5%. That is the mark of an incumbent that the electorate has a negative opinion of, that is unlikely to change. The change vote seemed to oscillate between Clinton and Perot. When Perot was down, Clinton was up, and vice versa. It is possible Perot cost Bush a few very close states, like Colorado, Montana, Ohio, and Georgia, but that is about it.

People will say, ”Perot and Clinton ganged up on Bush and made it 2 against one.” Perot directed his fire more at the DC establishment and the status quo than Bush. They also say, ”If Perot wasn't in the race, the Bush campaign could have made Clinton's character the defining issue.” That ignores the fact that from the time of the Democratic convention to the end of September, it was a one-on-one race. The Bush campaign threw everything including the kitchen sink at Clinton. They attacked him for pot smoking, adultery, and draft dodging, and made little or no progress closing the gap. Clinton had a 15 point lead over Bush before Perot got back in. Absent a major bombshell, another month of attacking Clinton's character would not get them the win.

The reality was that the voters decided they wanted a change. Clinton had passed the credible alternative test and swing voters had made an uneasy peace with his personal misdeeds. The Clinton team got that it was the economy, stupid. If not for Perot, The race likely would have tightened a bit in the end, which it did anyway, but Bush still would have lost handily.
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Old 06-08-2022, 02:28 PM
bu2
 
23,855 posts, read 14,623,704 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by MJoseph42286 View Post
People still push the ”Perot cost Bush the election” myth. That is not true. All you need to do is examine the polls. After Perot dropped out just before the Democratic National Convention, Clinton opened up a 22 point lead over Bush. In every single poll from the time of the Democratic National Convention through the end of September, Clinton let Bush anywhere from 15 to 25 points, except for a very brief period after the Republican National Convention, when it briefly closed to the high single digits. It only started to tighten again after Perot got back into the race.

If you look at the polls, Bush's numbers stayed in a very narrow range, between a low of 31% and a high of 38%. He finished with 37.5%. That is the mark of an incumbent that the electorate has a negative opinion of, that is unlikely to change. The change vote seemed to oscillate between Clinton and Perot. When Perot was down, Clinton was up, and vice versa. It is possible Perot cost Bush a few very close states, like Colorado, Montana, Ohio, and Georgia, but that is about it.

People will say, ”Perot and Clinton ganged up on Bush and made it 2 against one.” Perot directed his fire more at the DC establishment and the status quo than Bush. They also say, ”If Perot wasn't in the race, the Bush campaign could have made Clinton's character the defining issue.” That ignores the fact that from the time of the Democratic convention to the end of September, it was a one-on-one race. The Bush campaign threw everything including the kitchen sink at Clinton. They attacked him for pot smoking, adultery, and draft dodging, and made little or no progress closing the gap. Clinton had a 15 point lead over Bush before Perot got back in. Absent a major bombshell, another month of attacking Clinton's character would not get them the win.

The reality was that the voters decided they wanted a change. Clinton had passed the credible alternative test and swing voters had made an uneasy peace with his personal misdeeds. The Clinton team got that it was the economy, stupid. If not for Perot, The race likely would have tightened a bit in the end, which it did anyway, but Bush still would have lost handily.
There is absolutely zero doubt that Perot cost Bush the election. It WAS basically 2 on 1. He significantly weakened the Bush coalition. His whole campaign was against Bush. Of course the nastiness of Pat Buchanan hurt as well. Perot piled on with that.

Remember Clinton only got 43% of the vote. He couldn't even get 50% vs. the hapless Bob Dole.
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Old 06-08-2022, 02:35 PM
bu2
 
23,855 posts, read 14,623,704 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by markg91359 View Post
Maybe he could have won, but its a big maybe.

There were essentially four problems with his reelection in 1992.

1. The economy had weakened. Unemployment was up.

2. Republicans had held the presidency for three consecutive terms. The American people do not like to give lock to any political party for more than two presidential terms. It only happens in rare instances. Bush probably would have been beaten by Dukakis in 1988, except for the fact that Dukakis was a very poor candidate who ran a very bad campaign. By 1992, people were restless. Sometimes, you just sense people want something new. It can be terribly unfair to the candidate in office, but it happens. The best approach for the incumbent is to offer something new to the electorate and Bush could not do that.

3. The third party candidacy of H. Ross Perot drew more votes from republicans than it did from democrats. I won't go so far as to say this candidacy split the republican party. However, it hurt Bush more than Clinton.

4. Bush was a good administrator, but lacked much in the way of personal charisma. Clinton's style was more appealing.

Ultimately, Clinton won with a margin of about 5% over Bush. That's a sizeable vote tally to overcome. I'm not sure Bush could have beat him under any circumstances.
In addition, #1 was impacted by the psychological euphoria effect. We won the Cold War. We whipped Sadaam and drove him out of Kuwait with minimal casualties. Then all of the sudden, we couldn't create jobs. It caused a dramatic drop in his support.

And as someone mentioned there was the image. He was still out fishing to disprove the 1988 Democratic attacks that he was a wimp (the youngest aviator in WWII a wimp--unbelievable what Dems will push), instead of showing his concern for the economy. That annoyed me (for the stupidity) and I was a strong supporter. Now he knew the economy was coming back. If it had come back a month sooner, he probably would have won. But unemployment was lagging and people didn't feel it, so it appeared that he didn't care.

The good people had mostly left Washington, tired of DC after years of Republican presidents. Had James Baker been more involved the whole time, that would have helped him. Baker understood things. Instead he had yes men around him.
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Old 06-09-2022, 06:22 AM
 
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He would have won if Larry King (from the Clinton News Network) didn't get Ross Perot to run as an independent.
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Old 06-09-2022, 07:11 AM
 
145 posts, read 83,425 times
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I actually think things may have turned out better for Old Man Bush had it not been for the Gulf War. He wouldn't have gotten that false sense of security from the war and that would have forced him to pay attention to domestic issues.
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