You're absolutely right. It's simple now to look back and say that it was Perot's fault. That's just not true. Clinton was still an unknown quantity that didn't sound as bad as he turned out to be. I worked in a Perot campaign office and we called Republicans and asked them who they would vote for if Perot wasn't in the race. 99% said Clinton. These were people, like myself and my family, who just weren't going to vote for Bush again. Like everything, you have to look at it throught the eyes of the times...1992. Of course if we had the power of foresight, we would have voted for Bush. But that's just the way it was.
He had an ax to grind for the way he dismissed the POW/MIA of Viet Nam issue.
Papa Bush, McCain, and Kerry were all in on the idea of normalizing VN relations with the US.
There is much more to this story than meets the eye.