Transcript: Chapter 21

Narrator: In hindsight the recession was over by the spring of 1992 the recession was technically over. Bush's budget agreement was paying off, but so slowly people didn't feel it.

George H. W. Bush (archival): Gross national product, GNP is moving. Industrial production is up. Payroll employment is up. So things are turning around, and yet, at this juncture, the American people haven't felt it. When they do, I expect to see some change.

Narrator: In the second quarter of '92, the economy grew more slowly than Bush had hoped.

Marlin Fitzwater: Well, the president was getting reports from his economic advisors. And he looked at the first quarter figures and the second quarter figures, and it wasn't getting any better. And he just slumped in his chair, ashen-faced, and he just said, "What are we going to do about this? That's the worst news I've ever heard."

Narrator: Bush accepted his party's nomination that August with an appeal to the accomplishments in which he took most pride.

George H. W. Bush (archival): The Soviet Union can only be found in history books. The captive nations of Eastern Europe and the Baltics are captive no more. And a slab of the Berlin Wall sits right outside this Astrodome. This convention is the first at which an American president can say, "The Cold War is over, and freedom finished first!"

Richard Norton Smith: Presidents traditionally, when they run for re-election, particularly in the modern era, make it a referendum on what they've done. And in 1992, that wasn't enough. Because what he had done, significant as it might be and historically unprecedented as it might come to be seen, was irrelevant to what the American people increasingly wanted him to do, wanted him to concentrate on, which was pocketbook issues, which was domestic security to match the foreign security to which he had dedicated his presidency. By universal consensus Americans were demanding a different kind of leadership, a different kind of agenda, a different kind of government. And it wasn't in George Bush to give.

Narrator: "We still had no message, no campaign plan, no idea how to deal with Perot, no plan for the convention," a Bush aide would write. "We never did develop an answer to the basic question: Why should George Bush be reelected president?"

Mary Matalin, campaign aide: Politics is always about -- history is replete with evidence of this -- it's always about "what have you done for me lately." And the shelf life of anything, including the Persian Gulf conflict was short.

Timothy Naftali: He never connected with the American people. They never quite understood what he had done on their behalf. He didn't know how to sell it, and to a certain extent, he didn't want to sell it, because it he didn't think it was right to sell. Or when he tried to sell it, he did it wrong. George Bush was not his own best friend when he tried to explain George Bush.

John Robert Greene: There was something about George Bush that always said, "If they'd just pay attention, if they would listen to me, if they'd see what I've done. If they don't pay attention to the glitz and the glamour of my opponents, if they weigh my results, they'll know I have a vision. And I don't have to tell it to them. I don't have to stoop to that level." The problem is that you do have to stoop to that level. You do have to articulate a vision, particularly when your opposition is holding you accountable for not articulating a vision.

Bill Clinton (archival): And you have to vote for somebody with a plan that's what you have elections for. People say, he got elected to do this. . .

Narrator: During a presidential debate in October, Bush seemed disengaged.

Citizen question (archival): Yes, how has the national debt personally affected each of your lives?

Herbert Parmet, biographer: His lack of enthusiasm conveyed to much of the American public a lack of appetite, a lack of desire.

John Robert Greene: I was watching the debate with one of my classes, and Bush is sitting, looking completely disengaged. Did one of these. Just--(motions looking at watch). He looked at his watch as if he was completely bored and trying to figure out when his next appointment was. I jumped up, started yelling at the screen, "The election's over, the election's over." Bush in that split second showed himself to be a candidate who didn't want to campaign. He thought that his accomplishments would speak for themselves.

George H. W. Bush (archival): You know, if you listened to the Clinton-Gore ticket, the only way they can win is to convince America that we're in a deep recession. This morning, the figures were announced for the third quarter of this growth, the gross domestic product. The third quarter was plus 2.7 percent. It grew twice as much...

Narrator: A week before the election, Bush finally had good news on the economy. Bush was right. This was the beginning of the economic boom of the 1990s -- of the Clinton years. The good news came too late to save Bush's presidency.

Richard Darman: Objective analysts have looked at the Clinton surpluses. The Congressional Budget Office, the Senate Budget Committee, some people at the Brookings Institution and others have said that they think that of the policy changes that accounted for the Clinton surplus, roughly 60% came in the 1990 budget agreement, thanks to President Bush.

Narrator: After the good news came the bad news. Just five days before the election, a special prosecutor issued his report of the Iran contra scandal six years before. Bush, it seemed, was more in the loop than he had claimed.

News anchor (archival): ...with an Iran-Contra haunts Bush banner, and from across the river, with a well-placed sign.

George H. W. Bush (archival): It's all a matter of public record. And now at the last minute, the Friday before the election, you have this charge re-aired by a desperate Clinton campaign.

Narrator: In the final days of the campaign, Clinton was able to turn the character issue against Bush.

Bill Clinton: Today's disclosure not only contradicts the President's claims, it diminishes the credibility of the Presidency.

Narrator: Bill Clinton defeated Bush with 43 percent of the vote. Ross Perot took 19 percent. Bush got 37. It was the most decisive rejection of a sitting president since 1912.

John Robert Greene: Bill Clinton did not beat George Bush in 1992. Pat Buchanan beat George Bush in 1992. He let the right get away. He let the right be hijacked by Pat Buchanan. He let the right be hijacked by Newt Gingrich. He did not consider them to be as important as they had grown to be during the Reagan years. It was that lack of prescience; it was that lack of understanding, the power of the political right in 1992, that cost George Bush the election.

Herbert Parmet: And he was bothered that his failure to be re-elected in 1992 would lead historians to denigrate- not only denigrate his presidency, but denigrate his commitment to the future of his country. He's not grandstanding here, he's not politicking here. This is what he was really concerned with.

Marlin Fitzwater: And so we were all in the tunnel, waiting to go into the convention hall, and we're all kind of stunned and beat up and tired, and the President was in the lead with Mrs. Bush, and he just turned to everybody, and everybody kind of fell silent. And he said, "Now, we're going to go out here and do this with dignity and style," and turned around and walked out.

George H. W. Bush (archival): Thank you. Well here's the way I see it, the way we see it, and the country should see it. That the people have spoken. And we respect the majesty of the democratic system. I just called Governor Clinton over in Little Rock and offered my congratulations. He did run a strong campaign. I wish him well in the White House.

Herbert Parmet: I'll tell you a term he used to me. Thought he was a sleazeball. He was contemptuous of Clinton.

Colin Powell: He said, 'It hurt. It hurts a lot.' As it must have. 'Never thought it would happen. It hurt a lot.' He didn't think that the American people would turn in that direction so quickly.

Barbara Bush: It was very disappointing, to put it mildly, that he didn't win. I now think that we were saved the four most miserable years of our life. I think the press would have been all over him, worse than ever. And I think the Congress -- he never had a Congress, Senate or House. They would have just clobbered him. Maybe Newt saved us. Maybe. Miserable four years.