What should George H. W. Bush have done...?

[A18]

To win re-election?

[Bono]

To win re-election?

Not raise taxes.

[A18]

To win re-election?

Not raise taxes.

You think that alone would have done it?

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Made the Gulf War overlap with the 1992 election. Only thing is the media wasn't as right-wing back then, so they might have gotten upset.

[J. J.]

Probably come up with a stimulous plan in early 1992.

[The Dowager Mod]

Kidnap Perot

[MaC]

Dump Quayle.  Alone might not have done it, but it would've helped.  Possibly A Bush/Baker ticket

[bullmoose88]

Not give Buchanan a prime time slot at the convention...and reached out to Perot voters when Ross initially dropped out of the race.

[Alcon]

Moved to Arkansas and acquired an accent and charm.

[Platypus]

...and learnt to play the saxophone.

[Bono]

To win re-election?

Not raise taxes.

You think that alone would have done it?

Wouldn't hurt.
Also, should've droped NAFTA.

[dazzleman]

Timing is everything.

Bush gambled early on in his presidency that the economy would continue to be strong through his term.

He could have pulled a Nixon, and encouraged a recession in the first year of his term rather than his third.  If he'd done that, the economy would have been recovering more obviously by 1992, and he probably would have won.  Voters have a very short memory.

[The Duke]

Focus on crime more as a campaign theme after the LA riots.
Not break his no new taxes pledge.
Replace Dan Quayle with Pete Wilson for VP.
Talk less about his accomplishments and more about his plans.

[Banana Republic]

He needed to get Perot under control somehow, get rid of Dan Quayle, not let Pat Buchanan speak at the convention, and he should have moved to the centre ground to take the space Clinton was grabbing. Along with that he shouldn't have either made the pledge not to raise taxes or raised taxes; it gave the Democrats about 460 campaign commercials. I also agree with John Ford about focusing more on crime(although that could have backfired with the people who sympathised with Rodney King. They would equate "cracking down on crime" with the police brutality that sparked the riots).

[Speed of Sound]

perhaps get the FBI to blackmail another rich person with similar views to clinton's to run stealing alot of votes away from Clinton, possibly giving Perot enough EV's to take it to the (at that time) newly republican house. (I know that this is a long shot, so to anyone who wants to complain about it: )

[KillerPollo]

To win re-election?

not been elected in the 1st place

[dazzleman]

perhaps get the FBI to blackmail another rich person with similar views to clinton's to run stealing alot of votes away from Clinton, possibly giving Perot enough EV's to take it to the (at that time) newly republican house. (I know that this is a long shot, so to anyone who wants to complain about it: )

Bush was defeated in 1992.  The House didn't flip to the Republicans until 1994, so this wouldn't have worked.

[dazzleman]

He needed to get Perot under control somehow, get rid of Dan Quayle, not let Pat Buchanan speak at the convention, and he should have moved to the centre ground to take the space Clinton was grabbing. Along with that he shouldn't have either made the pledge not to raise taxes or raised taxes; it gave the Democrats about 460 campaign commercials. I also agree with John Ford about focusing more on crime(although that could have backfired with the people who sympathised with Rodney King. They would equate "cracking down on crime" with the police brutality that sparked the riots).

Perot came about as a result of Bush's weaknesses.  A better economy and a president with some sense of direction would have scared off Perot.  That's the only way to get Perot under control.

Bush shouldn't have broken his no-new-taxes pledge because the Democrats never reciprocated with spending cuts.  He was too trusting of Democrats he thought were his friends, when they were truly vicious gutter dwellers who stabbed him in the back.  Bush should have realized that Reagan was right about not trusting the Democrats in Congress instead of trying to reach out to them.  He reached out to them and, in their typical fashion, they bit his hand off.

Dumping a Vice President rarely works because it's an admission that it was a mistake to pick him in the first place.

I think Bush should have tried to turn the LA riots to his advantage by focusing more on crime.  This could have helped shore up his white conservative base, which was very wobbly and disgusted with him.  As for alienating those who sympathized with Rodney King, anybody who truly sympathized with the idea of rioting over the beating of a single man, who had a long criminal record, wouldn't be voting for Bush anyway.

The whole problem with Bush was that he was selling out his own voters to placate those who were never going to support him anyway.  I've seen so many liberals on here say they liked him, he was good, etc.  Would they ever have voted for him?  No.  That type of support is worthless.  For the getgo, Bush's support was a mile wide and an inch deep, with the result that when the going got tough, there was nobody to stick with him.  Any politician needs a strong base of people who will stick with him even when things are not going well.

Many of Bush's problems arose from the manner in which the 1988 campaign was run.  Bush proposed nothing positive, and therefore had no mandate when elected.  The circumstances of his election in 1988 then changed radically, and he had nothing to hold onto.  His supporters were lukewarm about him from the start, and he sold them out.  Meanwhile, the Democrats kicked him in the nuts, in their usual fashion.  He just ran out of steam; he had no ideas to propose, nothing to offer, other than (in the opinion of some) not being quite as bad as the Democrats.  While I agree that was true, it was not enough to win an election.  The final coup de grace was a temporarily weak economy, and Bush's inability to connect with the country over its economic discontent.

By 1992, the country was in a new era from when Bush was first elected, due to the fall of communism.  New eras usually begin with a letdown.  It's sad that at a time when we should have been celebrating our success in defeating communism, and facing no real threats, we were so unhappy.  Party time came later in the decade under Bill Clinton, when the economy got considerably better.

I always suspected that Bush didn't really want to win reelection, on some level.  He just didn't seem to try very hard.  He threw away all his good potential issue, and just let the Democrats emasculate him.  It was painful to watch.

[Speed of Sound]

perhaps get the FBI to blackmail another rich person with similar views to clinton's to run stealing alot of votes away from Clinton, possibly giving Perot enough EV's to take it to the (at that time) newly republican house. (I know that this is a long shot, so to anyone who wants to complain about it: )

Bush was defeated in 1992.  The House didn't flip to the Republicans until 1994, so this wouldn't have worked.

it was 12:00 in the morning.

[dazzleman]

perhaps get the FBI to blackmail another rich person with similar views to clinton's to run stealing alot of votes away from Clinton, possibly giving Perot enough EV's to take it to the (at that time) newly republican house. (I know that this is a long shot, so to anyone who wants to complain about it: )

Bush was defeated in 1992.  The House didn't flip to the Republicans until 1994, so this wouldn't have worked.

it was 12:00 in the morning.

...and you were a little hammered...

[Speed of Sound]

perhaps get the FBI to blackmail another rich person with similar views to clinton's to run stealing alot of votes away from Clinton, possibly giving Perot enough EV's to take it to the (at that time) newly republican house. (I know that this is a long shot, so to anyone who wants to complain about it: )

Bush was defeated in 1992.  The House didn't flip to the Republicans until 1994, so this wouldn't have worked.

it was 12:00 in the morning.

...and you were a little hammered...

I only had a few sips of Jesus Juice.

[skybridge]

Learn to defend himself better.

[PBrunsel]

Not look at his watch in the second deabte. The media pounded away at that for a long enough time.

Also, try to play down the blatantly partisan Iran-Contra B.S. realesed a week before the election.

[Giant Saguaro]

Well for starters, he could have started taking his re-elect bid seriously quite a bit earlier. And when it became apparent that he really was done, he just threw in the towel, really. I remember I and a host of other people volunteered to campaign for him in some of the states that he had won in '88 and looked very, very doubtful to win in '92 and they either didn't return the calls or said oh well. Something along the lines that we beat a liberal from MA and now we're going to beat a liberal from Arkanas. That was the attitude. Okay, fine. But I'm telling you he's up a sh*t creek. Well, you know, after someone like him has served so long what's he need another 4 years in the White House for?

In addition, he really came off as tired and I'd-rather-be-golfing sort of thing at the debates. Clinton was energetic, charismatic, "the man with the plan" and George was stumbling around and couldn't hear questions and couldn't understand others and gave mechanical answers and oh, heck, there's so much more he could have done. Didn't counter any of the media's campaign for Clinton either. Yeah, the media hit the Iran-Contra, there was the he didn't know what a jar of pickles cost, etc.

Clinton ran a devastating ad that showed Bush sitting there looking deadpan in front of the camera (from a speech clip) and saying something about not raising taxes or something and then the picture blipped, rolled, and Bush repeated what he said (like he's tired, worn out, and mechanical, which Clinton was playing on), and then the pictured faded to Clinton doing something or being cool and it's like aw, this one's over.

[Virginian87]

He should have actually done something after the Gulf War.  He just sort of sat there with his popularity ratings way up, and did nothing about it.  He shouldn't have made that promise not to raise taxes in '88 (the recession that proved his downfall was only starting in the late '80s).  He should have dumped Quayle, who was no asset to his re-election bid and not pardoned Cap Weinberger, which caused the public to link him to Iran-Contra.  As GiantSaguaro says, he really didn't seem to take his re-election bid seriously, thus he lost to a younger, colorful candidate.