RateItAll: The Opinion Network

Four stars for Ross Perot's funny charts. . .hilarious. . .remember when we were more afraid of hustling rednecks? We need those days to return. . .

With anti-communism off the table, the old Eisenhower-Reagan coalition finally fell apart and Bush lacked the vision and political skills to offer a substitute. Clinton and Perot ganged up on him and Clinton won in the end almost by default.

A frustrating race. A clumsy campaign by Bush; the screwball i'm in - I'm out - I'm in antics of Perot; left Clinton an opportunity to grab the Presidency. Bush certainly deserved to lose even though Clinton/Gore were shameless lying even then with ridiculous comments about 1992 having the worst economy in 50 years. (1991-1992 was no fun, but please check the economic indicators of those years vs. what Carter left for Reagan to deal with...)

The Bush Sr.-Clinton race of 1992 was an extremely boring race. The campaigns of both main party candidates was extremely vapid (even for a Presidential campaign!) with no issues being discussed. Bush assailed Clinton on issues of character; Clinton hit Bush on the economy (it's the economy, stupid) and Ross Perot was the casual nutbag in the race. The most surprising thing about the '92 campaign was that Perot was able to get 20% of the vote. Anyone who studies American politics can tell you that 3rd party movements usually don't get any significant support. Perot was able to tap into the people's disaffection with the system. The end of the cold war was here and no one was providing the visionary leadership needed to consolidate the gains of the previous 12 years. Bush was in a solid position to do this, but he missed the train and instead he got bogled down trying to prove his worth to the right wing elements of the GOP, which hurt him in the general election anyways. Clinton hit Bush in all the right places, but he was a weak candidate himself and indeed I maintain that he was a weak president as well. He was never able to confront the realities of leading the country. He became the Democratic nominee because other candidates who were stronger like former NY governor Mario Cuomo decided to sit out the race early on. Many felt that Bush would still be strong politically after the end of the Gulf War. Clinton was the strongest candidate in a fairly weak field. But Clinton did have a solid team behind him and he communicated himself well, even though it was all B.S. in my opinion. Bush Sr. in my view was a very good president, but he didn't have good people around him (especially at the end of his term) and he had a problem with as Bush calls it the vision thing. The bottom line: Bush didn't offer a clear agenda for the 1990's. He just sat there and said what he did in the past; people in a presidential campaign are looking for agenda items for the future. The prospect of a baby boomer president was a novelty to many people, especially considering the fact that he embodied the values of that generation. Of course Perot was a factor in the race too, but I don't think that he tipped it to Clinton either. From my own analysis of it, Perot ended up helping Bush because a lot of the states in the electoral college voted for Bush with a plurality of only 39% in some instances. In short, Clinton would have run away with the election had it not been for Perot's intervention. At the end of the day, Clinton only won 43% of the vote and 370 electoral votes, certainly no blowout by any means. Clinton would have won by a larger margin had it not been for Perot The desire for change was too great in this election, despite Clinton's weaknesses as a candidate.