Category: Economy

Beware the Democratic ‘pseudo-recession’ that’s destroyed past presidents.

Back in 1992, as the presidential campaign approached, incumbent President George HW Bush was seen as a shoo-in for reelection.

The First Gulf War ended in 1991 with a spectacular US 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%.

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 with far more foreign affairs experience.

Bush, however, had just lost his brilliant 1988 campaign manager, Lee Atwater, to cancer.

Most important, the US economy in 1990 had experienced a mild recession that had bottomed out in early 1991.

By the 1992 election, the United States was headed to full recovery.

In the last six months of 1992, GDP rebounded at an astonishing 4%.

The inflation rate in the months before the election was often less than 3%.

Even stubborn unemployment, at 7.3%, was starting to fall.

The eight-month recession officially ended in March 1991, followed by continual positive economic growth.

No matter: The canny Clinton campaign still ran on the directive “It’s the economy, stupid” and the slogan “Putting people first.”

Clinton’s theme song was the upbeat Fleetwood Mac hit “Don’t Stop,” highlighting the young Clinton-Gore ticket’s supposed contrast to the 68-year-old Bush.

Key to the Clinton campaign rhetoric was a false charge: “the worst job growth since the Great Depression.”

By November 1992, Clinton had convinced voters that the prior year’s recession was still in full force.

The doom-and-gloom, near-depression “recession” rhetoric, together with Perot’s third-party candidacy and Bush’s sluggish campaign, won Clinton the presidency with 43% of the popular vote.

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