Presidential Election of 1992

IN LATE FEBRUARY of 1991, President George H.W. Bush commanded an 89 percent job approval rating in a Gallup poll of 1,012 registered voters. Coming as it did just weeks after the liberation of Kuwait and the successful conclusion of the first Gulf War with Iraq, Bush's approval ratings were remarkably high, and portended a relatively easy path for the incumbent Republican to re-election in 1992. By late July 1992, however, just 17 months later, this same president's approval ratings had dipped to 29 percent, a loss of 60 percent. What seemed like an easy path to re-election only a year-and-a-half before turned into a treacherous road to electoral defeat in the presidential election of 1992.

The swift and certain conclusion to the Persian Gulf War in early 1991, coupled with the coincident collapse of the Soviet Union, worked to drive foreign policy from the nation's attention. For many Americans in late 1991 and early 1992, foreign policy questions and concerns seemed distant and relatively stable. Much more immediately relevant was the economic downturn facing the United States in 1991–92. By the early summer of 1992, the unemployment rate in the United States was 7.8 percent and overall productivity declined from 6.8 percent in the first quarter to 3.3 percent in the fourth quarter after posting an annual rate of 1.6 percent for 1991. Average hourly earnings were largely stagnant during this period, while the overall level of economic growth was lackluster.

Americans were concerned about significant social upheaval and occurrences separate from foreign policy as well as the U.S. economy as they prepared to select a president in 1992. In March of 1991, an African-American motorist named Rodney King was arrested in Los Angeles and was severely beaten by the arresting officers—an event captured surreptitiously on videotape and played endlessly on American televisions. When the four officers charged in the incident were acquitted in April of 1992, violence erupted throughout Los Angeles, resulting in a number of deaths and significant looting.

In the summer of 1991, President Bush nominated for the Supreme Court an African-American judge named Clarence Thomas to replace the retiring Thurgood Marshall. One of the signature political events of the early 1990s, the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings were transformed from a staid discussion of constitutional jurisprudence into a provocative display of race, sex, and power when University of Oklahoma law professor Anita Hill came forward to accuse the nominee of sexual harassment. Though Thomas was confirmed for the high court, his hearings brought new attention [Page 658]to issues of sexual harassment and the role and place of women in the workplace and in society.

On October 3, 1991, a relatively unknown governor of the small southern state of Arkansas announced on the steps of the governor's mansion in Little Rock that he would seek the Democratic nomination for president. Bill Clinton went where few Democrats dared to go in the fall of 1991. Many of the party's most prominent leaders—like New York Governor Mario Cuomo, Tennessee Senator Al Gore, and Missouri Congressman Richard Gephardt—opted not to seek the Democratic nomination, believing that George H.W. Bush would be re-elected with relative ease. After all, the week that Clinton declared his candidacy, the president's approval rating was a strong 65 percent.

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