Posted on 12/03/2018 8:35:07 AM PST by SeekAndFind
After twelve years of GOP rule, the political winds were not at his back in 1992.
The passing of George H. W. Bush has brought forth a multitude of tributes praising his public leadership and personal virtue — to which I say “Amen.” Bush, in my opinion, was one of the great presidents of the 20th century. He has too long been overshadowed, first by Ronald Reagan, the great leader of the conservative movement who beat him for the 1980 GOP nomination; then by Bill Clinton, the youthful and “cool” governor from Arkansas who defeated him in the 1992 election; and finally, by his own son, George W. Bush, who won the second term that his father could not, but whose tenure was much more controversial.
It is not my purpose here to enumerate the reasons that Bush 41 was such a good president. Instead, I’d like to stipulate that he was, and try to understand why his successes in office were insufficient to win reelection in 1992. Ultimately, his presidency was cut short by forces outside his control.
Governing a country as diverse and complex as ours is no little feat. It is not just that presidents have to manage the foreign and domestic affairs of the nation; they also have to tend to their political coalitions, which are never set in stone. Usually, this is too difficult to accomplish for more than eight years.
The biggest problem that most presidencies face is the business cycle, with all its vagaries. Presidents are quick to take credit for good economies, but this means they get stuck with the blame for recessions. The business cycle has been a major factor in presidential politics going all the way back to 1840, when Martin Van Buren was bounced from office partly because of the Panic of 1837.
Holding together an electoral coalition for more than eight years is also difficult. Coalitions do not form out of midair, nor are they purely the product of demographic forces outside of anybody’s control. They have to be built and maintained by political entrepreneurs who see an opportunity to craft a majority around personalities and policies. The factions that make up the constituent parts of a majority need not be in harmony with one another on all matters. In fact, the prospects of disharmony increase over time — as a president at first passes legislation that unifies his coalition, what is left are items that do not bring the party together and may even drive it apart.
These are the challenges that a single president faces over eight years. They become enormously greater over the course of twelve years or more. Expansions in the business cycle rarely last for more than a decade, which means that a recession tends to be right around the corner after a third consecutive victory. And if the party has been in office for that length of time, when the recession comes, it will likely get all of the blame (as opposed to a recession at the beginning of the first term, which can be blamed on the failures of the other side).
The coalitional politics get trickier, too, thanks in part to the 22nd Amendment, which states, “No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice.” Franklin Roosevelt’s coalitions in 1940 and 1944 (when he was reelected to his third and fourth terms) were at least in part personal in nature. Voters stayed with FDR because of him. But with the establishment of a two-term limit, a party must find a new candidate, who may not be able to re-create the old coalition.
Factor into this the possibility of negative external shocks, such as wars or domestic crises, that make voters want change, and you wind up with the tendency that has characterized much of our national politics: two terms and then out, for each party. It is not a hard-and-fast rule, but it is pretty evident in our history.
Bush defied this general trend by winning a third consecutive term for the Republican party — a testament to voter confidence in Reagan-Bush governance. Alas, winning a fourth term would have been truly extraordinary. Only the Jeffersonian Republicans, Lincolnian Republicans, Teddy Rooosevelt–McKinley Republicans, and FDR Democrats have managed that. And at the risk of “special pleading,” one can argue that side factors in these cases helped the incumbent party win a fourth consecutive term (or more). Westward expansion left the Federalist opponents of Jefferson electorally isolated; the Civil War and Reconstruction gave the Lincoln Republicans a boost; the unlikely rise of Teddy Roosevelt transformed the Republican party and extended its rule; the Great Depression’s end and the foreign troubles that led to World War II gave FDR and Truman multiple terms beyond two.
Bush had no such political winds at his back. The economy sank into a recession in 1990. It was a mild one, in historical perspective, but the recovery from it felt very slow, making Republican “trickle-down economics” an easy target of Democratic ire. And the politics in Bush’s own party had grown untenable. The GOP coalition created in 1980 was built on tax cuts, military-spending increases, and cuts in domestic spending. The latter proved politically impossible, but the Republicans still cut taxes and increased military spending, yielding a massive budget deficit. This, in turn, divided the Reagan coalition by the 1990s: Conservative Republicans were still demanding spending cuts, while moderate Republicans and middle-of-the-road voters still opposed them.
Between the recession and the politics of deficit reduction, Bush’s reelection was a tough prospect. The country at large was ready for a change, and Republicans were eager to reset their political coalition. If Bush had first been elected in, say, 1980, I think he would have been easily reelected four years later. But to be elected as a Republican in 1988 after eight years of GOP governance made for a very difficult challenge indeed.
It says a lot about the quality of his governance that he has been remembered so fondly. We should remember that getting reelected is not a necessary condition for being a good president. Sometimes we the people are so “itchy” for a change that we fail to reelect a president who was in fact very good at his job. That was the case with George H. W. Bush.
The Clinton Team and the complicit media managed to market a small cyclical economic downturn under Bush into "the worst economy since the Great Depression".
It's a model that they still use every election, but most people subconsciously tune them out on the economy. Mostly, they just label every Republican "literally Hitler" and hope for the best.
Rarely has someone who has served 2 terms as VP and one term as president elected to a second term as president. It doesn’t happen.
Also Bush ran a lackluster campaign. And it was bad optics when he was shown looking at his wristwatch during one of the debates.
1. He wasn't a great President.
2. He was an aloof, detached candidate who simply didn't appeal to many voters.
Yesterday, somebody posted on a GHWB thread, the popular vote totals for Bush, Perot, and Clinton. If his data, and my arithmetic were right, Clinton got more than the combined totals for Bush and Perot.
The Clinton Team and the complicit media managed to market a small cyclical economic downturn under Bush into "the worst economy since the Great Depression".
It's a model that they still use every election, but most people subconsciously tune them out on the economy. Mostly, they just label every Republican "literally Hitler" and hope for the best.
Definitely. it’s was the perfect “get rid of the old guard” campaign. And Bush was terrible in debates, always had been. Got lucky running against Dukakis who found a way to be even worse.
But if Clinton looked at his watch, it would never have been reported. I wonder sometimes if Bush didn’t himself vote for Clinton in 1992. He confessed to doing so with Mrs. Bill in 2016.
The Elephant in the room is the stark fact that in 1988, the Republican Party fractured, dooming President Bush to a single term and elevating the Clinton Crime Family into the White House. The face of the fracture was Ross Perot, painted by the press as an idiot. It turns out he was an idiot, but the real story of the election was the inability of the Republican Party to arrange their internal affairs to maintain their political power for the good of the party and for the good of the country.
This was a foreshadow of the 2016 election, where a populist outsider decided to run for the Presidency. The press reprised their 1988 role and set out to destroy Donald Trump. The outcome was reversed and the American people refused to be led down the primrose path, electing Donald Trump. Of course, Donald Trump turns out to be anything but an idiot, outsmarting everyone in the Washington establishment with a plan of action and an uncanny ability to achieve what he set out to do. That plan is not yet done, and faces fierce opposition from both the press and the Democrat Party who still want to overthrow Trump’s government. And, don’t forget that many within the Republican Party are enablers of this overthrow effort.
Would a Bush 2d term turned out better than two terms of Clinton and what would have followed?
So completely out of touch that the first time he encountered a supermarket barcode scanner was at a photo op.
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A guy in his position probably doesn’t do much grocery shopping. I remember when that happened. They asked him how much is bread, milk etc. He didn’t know and was portrayed as being completely out of touch.
Guess what?? I have no idea how much that stuff costs either. On the rare instances when I get groceries I just grab it and pay for it. No idea what an item costs.
That’s womens work.
Clinton played the sax
He went on tv talk shows
Old women liked his “charm”
And the MSM sold him as the next JFK.
This was before we learned he was a rapist.
Even than many women stuck by him.
And to many still do..but not So publically.
Both Truman and JFK deserve kudos for handling the economy but get less than stellar marks in foreign affairs. It is ironic that fans of JFK count his greatest deed as handling of the Cuban missle crisis (which he did well), but fail to mention that his dithering shameful handling of the Bay of Pigs set the stage for it. Fans of Truman count his greatest deed in firing Douglas MacArthur while failing to mention that said action ensured no better than an indecision in the Korean War, a mess which only our current president has made any real progress in cleaning up. So, yes, the two greatest Democrat presidents of the 20th century were merely mediocre.
So was George H.W. Bush.
The seeds of the greatest event in the Bush legacy (collapse of the iron curtain) were sewn by his predecessor. I'll give him credit for being a great supporter of Ronald Reagan, but he was a globalist at heart who got rolled by the Democrats.
Perot delivered the Trump/MAGA message 24 years earlier and it worked on working-class white Republicans. But working-class white Democrats weren’t listening yet, so all Perot accomplished was to give us Clinton.
But IMHO, the main reason Bush Sr. didn't win a 2nd term is because it would have been the 4th term in the row for the same party (Republican). The fact that he won the 1st term is remarkable.
Think about it. When Bush Sr. won in 1988 it was the first time since the 1950's that we had one political party in the WH for more than 2 terms (Bush Sr. following 2 terms of Reagan). And Bush Sr. was the first time sitting VP to win Presidential election since 1836. I count him as being successful at overcoming a huge trend obstacles, at least regarding election successes.
The left has learned the value of a third party candidate. The deep state will try this in 2020. Mark my words.
I will mention Perot but first....
As I remember the election, Bush was (as said in a previous post) “A Caretaker president..... He was uninspiring and he was not a true conservative.”
Picture Jeb as president
Quayle did not help either. Bush should of had someone else. Dan was like Joe Biden, just a little weird. But you couldn’t really say what was wrong.
I was living in the Dallas area at that time and saw Perot at a luncheon for the Salvation Army and you could feel the energy. He was very impressive.
Trump-like energy, ideas, goals, direction, strategy.
Think “Build the wall” only his battle cry was reduce debt and keep jobs in the US, improve the economy.
Unfortunately a flawed character, as we later found out.
In addition to his personal problems, Perot’s talking points were stolen towards the end of the campaign by Clinton, who was more charismatic than Bush.
So Clinton, then had ideas plus charisma versus Jeb.
George Bush Republican 39,104,545
Ross Perot Independent 19,742,267
Why is it NOBODY in the Conservative Commitariat, and NO Republican politicians will call this man out for his crime against the American people?
He brought the intelligence agencies into the pinnacle of governance, creating the “deep state” that is now trying to overthrow a duly elected President.
Is it because he is not yet in the ground, or is it because they fear what he created?
God, if only we had a few more Bushes and McCains, what a world it would be!
““A Great President” - good grief - stop with this stuff. He sold out the Reagan Coalition to the the New World Order and George Mitchell. Pleez.”
He sent his own VP to gut Reagan’s true legacy which was manned hypersonic flight. This from a war pilot, spit.
"outsider" third party candidates only harm establishment boring uninspiring rudderless entitled leaders like George HW Bush. A third party candidate in 2020 would only harm the Dems.
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