Click here: to donate by Credit Card
Or here: to donate by PayPal
Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794
Thank you very much and God bless you.
Posted on 12/26/2025 5:59:55 AM PST by MtnClimber
Clinton won in 1992 by selling a recession that was already over; the lesson for 2026 is simple—ignore real economic gains, and a fake downturn can still decide an election.
As the 1992 campaign approached, incumbent president George H.W. Bush was seen as a shoo-in for reelection.
The First Gulf War ended in 1991 with a spectacular U.S. victory at the head of a coalition that had expelled Saddam Hussein from Kuwait with few losses.
For much of 1991, Bush’s approval ratings hovered between 90 and 70 percent.
By February 1992, an obscure Arkansas governor, Bill Clinton, emerged as the favorite Democratic nominee. But he was written off as having little chance to knock off the popular Republican incumbent president with far more foreign affairs experience.
Bush, however, had just lost his brilliant 1988 campaign manager, Lee Atwater, to cancer. And third-party prairie-fire candidate Ross Perot had entered the race, drawing off conservative Bush support.
Most importantly, in 1990, the U.S. economy had experienced a mild recession that had bottomed out in early 1991.
By the 1992 election, the U.S. was headed to full recovery.
In the last six months of 1992, GDP rebounded at over an astonishing four percent.
The inflation rate in the months before the election was often less than three percent.
Even stubborn unemployment was starting to fall to 7.3%. The eight-month recession officially ended in March 1991, followed by continual positive economic growth.
No matter. The brilliant Clinton campaign still ran on the directive “It’s the economy, stupid” and the slogan “Putting people first.”
The Clinton theme song was the upbeat Fleetwood Mac hit “Don’t Stop,” highlighting the young Clinton-Gore ticket in supposed contrast to the 68-year-old Bush.
Key to the Clinton campaign rhetoric was the false charge of “the worst job growth since
(Excerpt) Read more at amgreatness.com ...
|
|
Click here: to donate by Credit Card Or here: to donate by PayPal Or by mail to: Free Republic, LLC - PO Box 9771 - Fresno, CA 93794 Thank you very much and God bless you. |
VDH ping
What the left tries to call “The Great Recession” came after manipulators crashed the stock market by hacking the sketchy “derivates”.
Have often wondered if it was Soros and his fellow globalists that were behind that whole thing.
Bush41, was Clinton’s CIA-handler.
Just as he was Reagan’s CIA-handler.
Gotta wonder how much of Epstein’s files have Bush41’s fingerprints on them?
Whether the pseudo-recession of 2025-2026 works as well as the fake 1992 recession now hinges on whether the Trump campaign learns from the past and from now on fixates on the economy.
In 1992, the old media controlled the narrative and favored Bill Clinton, who ran a good campaign.
1n 2026, the old media no longer controls the narrative. We live in a fractured, partisan media environment where no one party controls the narrative. It is similar to the media environment in the early Republic, where everyone knew the media was partisan, and there was no “national” media conglomerates.
Entry into today’s media requires access to the Internet, and messages the public is interested in.
I would really love to believe this is true, but both the polling and the special election results the last couple of months very much say otherwise.
BS. A fella by the name of ROSS PEROT got the former CIA chief out of the WH as payoff to Clinton for allowing the drug running through Mena, Arkansas.
Bush lost because he broke his tax promise, and tried to undo Reagan did.
As the A Beka “The History of Our United States” titled it, “The media create a ‘crisis’”.
"Clinton won in 1992 by selling a recession that was already over"
Clinton won in 1992 by the media selling a recession that was already over.
Clinton merely rode the journalistic wave. Yeah he probably said those things in his ads I don't remember. But the media were the major water carriers. The media had so much influence back then they even successfully covered up Chinagate in favor of blue dress gate. Most people shamefully fell for the ruse.
Instead of an intern's name becoming household, the name that would've been household had we had honest journalism would've been Charlie Trie.
The media created that presidency. The media saved that presidency.
I too wish the media no longer controlled the narrative.
There are some select things - when we make a fuss about it - that they can’t carry all the way. But the general culture is still very much resoundingly progressive.
They do not “control” the narrative anywhere like they did in 1992. They have influence, but so do numerous other players.
If they controlled the narrative, President Trump could never have won in 2024.
I agree they don’t have the kind of monopoly they did decades ago. Be we shouldn’t kid ourselves, they still have a LOT of power and influence. If they didn’t, Trump’s poll numbers would be quite a bit higher, especially given that he is objectively doing a pretty darn good job, especially compared to the absolute disaster his predecessor was!
Problem with this hypothesis is we have pretty good data on how voters form their opinions about the state of an economy vis a vis an election. For a November election the first quarter of that year is the most important in forming the average voter’s impression of how things are going. That first quarter of ‘92 things still weren’t going well.
Yet, the left, like the Clinton campaign of old, is talking nonstop bout “affordability”—both ignoring the Democrats’ own dismal 2021-2025 economic record and claiming Trump, like Bush, cares more about those overseas than at home.
An historian remembering recent history! The latest from Prof Hanson.
FR Index of his articles: Victor Davis Hanson on FR
Town Hall: Victor Davis Hanson on Town Hall
American Greatness: Victor Davis Hanson on American Greatness
His website: Victor Davis Hanson The Sword of Perseus
One of his sponsors' website: The Daily Signal
Please let me know if you want on or off this new VDH ping list.
As a reminder, Professor Hanson has asked that we do not post the full article of his writings. Thank you for following the link to finish his article.
Content created by the Center for American Greatness, Inc. is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a significant audience.
That’s a very good point. Q1 and Q2 of 2020 killed Trump, even though Q3 was a spectacular recovery. :-(
I also find the inflation numbers to poorly reflect what average consumers experience*, and when prices jump, then level off, average consumers adjustment to / opinion of the continued high prices, even if the inflation rate is very low, persists a long time.
*That’s not just me - some Obama adviser studied this late in Biden’s term — apparently a few Dems were bright enough to wonder why consumers were still bitching about inflation while Biden was blabbing about the lower inflation RATES. The study found the published gov’t inflation numbers were lower than what average families actually experienced. This was consistent going back several Administrations, and was tied to the methodology behind the gov’t numbers.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.