ELECTION #52, 1992. The NASTY-METER stays at 10.

QUOTE from Bill Clinton in his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention on July 16, 1992: "My fellow Americans, I end tonight where it all began for me-I still believe in a place called Hope, God bless you, and God Bless America."

It is hard to believe that George H.W. Bush got beat in 1992. After the Gulf War in 1990 he had an approval rating of an unbelievable 90%. It appeared he was unbeatable BUT - he reneged on his his "no new taxes' promise of 1988, the national debt had skyrocketed to over four trillion dollars under Reagan, his tax cuts had made for an explosion of wealth for the top 1%, and one in ten Americans was living on food stamps, and one in eight lived below the poverty level. He was vulnerable with these issues plus two other Republicans would give him fits.

The CANDIDATES in 1992.

REPUBLICAN: GEORGE H.W. BUSH.

By the time of the Republican convention in the summer of 1992 Bush's approval ratings had dropped to 40%. His wife Barbara had higher approval ratings than the president-and his dog, Millie, wasn't far behind. And he wouldn't give up his hapless VP, J. Danforth Quayle - it was a mistake not to dump him.

DEMOCRAT: WILLIAM "BILL" CLINTON.

Bill Clinton was the twentieth century version of a "log cabin" presidential candidate. He was born poor in Hope, Arkansas, in 1946. His father had died in a car accident when he was three months old,and his stepfather was an abusive alcoholic. Clinton triumphed over all these circumstances to become a Rhodes scholar, attend Yale Law School, and, in 1978, became the governor of Arkansas at thirty-two years old. He won on the first ballot and chose Senator Al Gore of Tennessee as his VP running mate.

INDEPENDENT CANDIDATE: ROSS PEROT.

Perot was from Texas and had founded a data retrieval firm called EDS in 1962 and turned it into a billion-dollar company. He financed his own campaign.

The CAMPAIGN in 1992.

The Republicans went after Clinton in three main ways:

-The first was Clinton's sex life. The Republican sleaze-meisters whispered that Clinton had had a child with a black woman, was a rapist, a sexual predator, and had felt up a woman in the bathroom at his own wedding. The only attack that partially stuck was when Gennifer Flowers, a nightclub singer and a former Arkansas state employee, claimed they had had a twelve-year relationship. Clinton denied it and did damage control on "60 Minutes" when he only admitted he had caused "pain in my marriage." It was enough to somewhat defuse the situation.

- A second way was Clinton smoking marijuana. This one was not a big factor. Clinton brushed it off by saying, "but I didn't inhale." I have a feeling that many voters didn't really care if Clinton had smoked marijuana - many of them had done so, also. (By the way that quote is still up brought up at times in 2012.)

- A third way the Republicans attacked Clinton was that he was a draft-dodger. Maybe "dodge" was too strong a word, but he had avoided military service until he lucked into a high draft lottery number.

Even one wealthy Republican businessman spent $40,000 of his own money digging for dirt that would torpedo Clinton. It did little good.

When Clinton jumped out to a 13 point lead in the polls the Republicans got so nervous they sought advice from British Prime Minister John Major, who had won despite a weak economy and poor personal ratings. Their only suggestion was to plaster pictures of Gennifer Flowers on huge billboards all over the country above the words, "AND NOW HE WANTS TO SCREW THE COUNTRY, TOO.)

Bush tried to get at Clinton and the Democrats in other ways. He called them"cultural elitists" and "tree huggers" and 'atheists" (they "don't even have the three letters G-O-D in their party platform"). He even claimed if Harry Truman were alive he would vote Republican - Harry's daughter, Margaret, vehemently denied it. Bush conveniently forgot how viciously the Republicans had attacked Truman in the 1940s and 1950s. Bush also claimed that "my dog Millie knows more about foreign affairs than those two bozos," referring to Clinton and Gore.

And Quayle did not help matters when he went after Candace Bergen, who played Murphy Brown on the very popular TV show of the same name. Murphy was an anchorwoman who had decided to give birth to a child out of wedlock. Quayle thundered that bearing a child alone "mocks the importance of fathers" and was an example of the "poverty of values" that afflicted TV. It did not go over as many Republicans really liked the Murphy Brown show also. The White House decided that Quayle should change his tune and praise Brown for having the child instead of having an abortion. And then in June Quayle tried to correct an elementary student that he should spell "potato" as "potatoe." It made for another laugh about Quayle's intelligence and his being a heartbeat away from the presidency.

And then there was the Republican "Opposition Research Team." It was created by Lee Atwater with headquarters at the Republican National Headquarters in D.C., and had a $6,000,000 budget. It's job was to find anything that could be used against Clinton. They even went to Little Rock to see what they could find. They came home with thirty file drawers with speculation on Clinton's sex life. The problem was that Bush wouldn't let them use the sexual gossip they had gathered - some felt he was taking the high road, others wondered if the president felt vulnerable to rumors of his own adultery.

None of these attacks seemed to faze Clinton or hurt him in a big way - it is no wonder the Republicans called him "Slick Willie."

The biggest asset the Democrats had was Bill Clinton himself. He was extraordinarily charismatic, handsome, empathetic, and a brilliant "policy wonk" with an impressive memory for details. And The Democrats had the message the people wanted, that message was, "IT'S THE ECONOMY, STUPID." The debates allowed Clinton to show off his tremendous talents and intelligence.

Ross Perot called his campaign organization "United We Stand America." He crusaded mainly against national debt. With his squeaky drawl, jug-handle ears, and love of pie charts, he was a little like everyone's old high-school math teacher.

The WINNER was BILL CLINTON and he became the 42nd president of the United States.

Clinton got 44,908,254 popular and 370 electoral.

Bush got 39,102,282 popular and 168 electoral.

Perot got 19,741,048 popular and 0 electoral.

Perot got 19% of the vote and hurt Bush the most which enabled Clinton to win. Clinton only got 43% of the vote, the lowest percentage of the popular vote since Woodrow Wilson beat Taft and Roosevelt (with 41%) in 1912. Clinton was only 46 years old.