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Why Bush Lost -- and What It Means
| Article
# : |
10419 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
Date : |
2 / 1993 |
2,385 Words |
| Author
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Lee Edwards
Lee Edwards is senior editor for the Current Issues section
of THE WORLD & I. His latest book is The Power of Ideas: The
Heritage Foundation at Twenty-five. |
For George Bush to have won reelection as president last November would have required all of the following:
* A recovering economy due at least in part to the prudential actions of a concerned chief executive;
* A carefully crafted and vigorously implemented campaign that offered a clear vision of what Bush would do in his second term;
* A united, aggressive Republican Party, proud of and pleased with Bush's performance as president;
* A lackluster Democratic opponent preferably from the North, unable or unwilling to recast his party's liberal image;
* A divided, apathetic Democratic Party, resigned to defeat for the sixth time in the last seven presidential elections;
* No articulate, well-financed third-party candidate whose message strongly appealed to Republicans.
But, in fact, not one of these conditions for victory came to pass, and George Bush went down to decisive defeat, gaining only 38 percent of the popular vote, one point less than Barry Goldwater's humiliating loss to President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.
Of 40 key demographic groups, only 6 preferred Bush to Bill Clinton: families earning $75,000 a year or more, Protestants, families whose financial situation was better than in 1988, Republicans, conservatives, and Reagan voters in 1984. Every other group--men, women, whites, blacks, high school graduates, college graduates, independents, Catholics, first-time voters, and nonunion households--supported Clinton.
The inevitable result was the collapse of the broad-based coalition that has won the last three presidential elections for Republicans. For example, Bush's white support slipped badly, from 61 percent in 1988 to 39 percent in 1992. The president's standing among voters 18-29 years old plummeted 20 points to only 34 percent.
Among Catholic voters, who once provided the base for Reagan Democrats in the East and Midwest, Bush fell 12 points, to 37 percent. The only region that the president managed to carry in 1992 was the South, but only by a
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