This is the second episode in an occasional series examining significant elections in American history. The first installment covered the election of 1980.
In March 1991, after a U.S.-led coalition had expelled Iraq’s armies from Kuwait, President George H.W. Bush may have thought no one could defeat him come November of the following year. His approval rating soared to 89%, according to Gallup. He would win a second term, making it four consecutive White House triumphs for the Republican Party. But when the election year began, Bush’s job approval rating had dropped by about half. A recession had ended the nation’s longest peacetime economic expansion and the job market’s recovery was sluggish.
A relatively unknown but talented Southern governor, Bill Clinton, emerged from a crowded Democratic field to challenge Bush, who was already dealing with a right-wing populist insurgency led by Pat Buchanan. In February 1992, Texas businessman Ross Perot entered the race as an independent. Despite briefly dropping out of the race in July, Perot won more than 19 million votes (although none in the Electoral College), an early sign, in retrospect, that the two-party consensus was giving way to the discontent now pervading American political life. Polls today show that most Americans would prefer neither former President Donald Trump nor President Biden appear on this year’s ballot.
Arkansas Gov. Clinton won the three-way race with a plurality of the popular vote (43%) and 370 Electoral College votes to Bush’s 168. In this episode of History As It Happens, historians Jeffrey Engel and Jeremi Suri discuss the enduring relevance of this memorable election. It was the first presidential contest after the Cold War. Foreign policy triumphs mattered less to an electorate more focused on domestic matters. A sense that the country was moving in the wrong direction dominated discourse.
“It’s the first election of the era we live in today. And you can see all the major issues we are still debating today, whether it’s NAFTA and free trade, welfare or healthcare, Americans’ civil identity and who deserves to be considered an American. Immigration was a big issue,” said Mr. Engel, the founding director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University.
“It is the election where Pat Buchanan becomes an important presence … and challenges the standard-bearer of the Republican Party George Bush… It’s an important moment in the rise of the far right,” said Mr. Suri, a historian at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin.
History As It Happens is available at washingtontimes.com or wherever you find your podcasts.
