Talk Elections

What do you think would've happened differently if George H.W. Bush won the election in '92 and thus served from 1993 to 1997? What would've been different in terms of foreign policy, economics and socially? Would Clinton have run in 1996 had he been beaten in '92?

No Hillarycare = No Republican Revolution

Greenspan + Cyclical nature of economy = Bush Boom

Somalia = Somalia

Waco = Waco

1996 = Gore or Kerrey win over Quayle.

His eldest son never becomes president.

Not neccessarily true. Dubya still could have run for governor while his dad was still president. And it is still possible that if a Democrat won in 1996, he still could have run for president either in 2000 or 2004.

Although if it was true, then I kind of wish Bush Sr. had been reelected just so we wouldn't have had to deal with his son's disastrous presidency.

Blame Gore for that. Gore essentially blew an election that he was supposed to win in a landslide.

Also, I think that having Bush Sr. serve two terms might have increased his son's (either George Jr.'s or Jeb's) chances of becoming President since his legacy would probably be somewhat better and thus more people would be inclinced to vote for one (or both) of his sons.

Ummmm....what? I recall one early 2000 poll that had Gore trailing by over 40 points. If anything, it was a hell of a comeback.

The most pro-Bush poll I saw was Bush by 19%, back in 1999 I believe. Also, Bush Sr. was trailing Dukakis by 15-20% throughout the summer, yet still won by a landslide in the fall due to the good economy, Reagan's popularity, and lack of foreign wars/threats. Many voters don't really begin to pay attention to the race until after Labor Day. Similarly, in 2000, Clinton was popular, the economy was good, and there were no foreign threats or wars--yet unlike Bush Sr., Gore never managed to open a large lead over Bush and ended up losing the election by several hundred votes (the margin would have very likely been larger had it not been for Bush's DUI story). In fact, Clinton's popularity on electin day was higher (about 60%) than Reagan's was (about 52-53%), yet Gore still managed to blow it.

Ummm...just to let you know, I never actually said that in my post that it was anybody's fault. I was simply responding to Magic 8-Ball, who suggested that Dubya wouldn't have been elected if Bush Sr. was reelected, and I was just saying I wished that Bush Sr. was reelected if that had been true.

I wasn't neccessarily blaming anybody for this, though I do agree that Gore does deserve some blame for not running a very good campaign.

Well at least the country would have been spared Bill Clinton...

Quayle would never have been the Republican nominee. Dole would still probably have gotten his shot.

You make it sound like Clinton was all that bad.

Clinton was a scumbag, so of course I would rather he had lost in 1992.

Democrats would probably have the white house right now in 2018 until 2020.

I wonder how the NRA and Tim McVeigh would have reacted to Waco if it happened under HW and Barr instead of Clinton and Reno. m

Also, no Clintons = less intense culture wars.

Bush winning re-election in 1992 leads to a different 90's politically. W/out a Democratic president in office, & one which the Republicans can run against & blame, & w/out the presidential loss & a subsequent political fit that was thrown, there's no "Republican Revolution" of any sort in 1994. In regards to Congress, Bush's presidency would've given Democrats somebody to run against, so I think Democrats would do quite well for themselves. There also wouldn't have been Clinton trying to push healthcare reform through, which was a big factor that led to the Gingrich era.

His ideas & policies would surely differ from Clinton's while in office. He would've had issues w/ deficit control, being faced by the Democratic-controlled Congress demanding increased taxes, while his own party wanted to slash spending. Foreign policy wise, we might well have gone into Rwanda to stop the mass killings, regardless of having U.N. backing or not, though our doing so may have drawn other countries to do the same.

By 1996, you would have what was planned for 1996 circa pre-1992: all the Democratic candidates who opted out of what they thought was an unwinnable 1992 seeking the nomination. That includes Mario Cuomo, Al Gore, & a long list of others. You'd also see the Republicans having been in office for 16 years, so the White House is due for a major change over to the Democrats. I don't know who the Republicans would nominate. Quayle is stupid, although he probably would've tried. You could likely still have Dole, as an elder statesman Republican, which was why the Republicans nominated him in 1996 anyway. You could also have somebody most people aren't even familiar w/.

Additionally, both W. & Jeb! wait 'til 1998 to run for their respective governorships, having expected that if Republicans lost the White House in 1996, then it'll be a Republican wave year in 1998.

A Bush 1992 win would likely see the Presidency go down a path like this:

Bush: 1989-1997
Democrat: 1997-2005
Republican: 2005-2009
Democrat: 2009-2017
Democrat: 2017-2021
Republican: 2021-Incumbent

George Bush : 1989-1997
Ann Richards : 1997-2005
Sam Nunn : 2005-2009
Mitt Romney : 2009-2017
Mary Landrieu: 2017- Present

George Bush:  1989-97
John Kerry:  1997-05
John McCain:  2005-09
Barack Obama:  2009-17
Donald Trump:  2017-present

41. George H.W. Bush: 1989-1997
42. Mario Cuomo: 1997-2005
43. Ann Richards: 2005-2006
44. John Kerry: 2006-2009
45. Jeb Bush: 2009-2017
46. Tim Pawlenty: 2017-

I wonder what would become of McVeigh. His belief in right-wing conspiracy theories about Waco was what drove him to bomb OK City.

I think the economy would have still been good in '96 even with a Bush victory, but after 16 years in the WH I think people would have been tired of the GOP and a Democrat would have been elected in '96 unless the Democrats put up awful candidates like they did in '84 and '88. I think the possible contenders for the nomination on the Democratic side would have been Mario Cuomo, Ann Richards, Dick Gephardt, Al Gore, Sam Nunn, Bob Graham, Bob Kerrey and John Kerry (that doesn't mean they all run of course). My personal feeling is the nomination would have gone to either Richards, Gephardt or Graham out of these (I think Democrats would be weary of nominating a Northeastern liberal after being out of office for 16 years, they probably would have preferred to nominate a safer candidate, but Cuomo would still have his shot of course, especially if he was the one major liberal running against several moderate and conservative candidates). The GOP doesn't nominate Quayle; I think their options would have been either Dole, Powell, James Baker or Kemp (you'll notice that the Democrats already have a much larger talent pool than the GOP, which should say something about their chances in 1996). I think any of them most likely end up being a sacrificial lamb. And then a Democrat is President until 2005 or 2009.

I generally agree with the quoted analysis.

Oh and I think the culture wars would have been much less intense, at least waiting until the mid to late 2000s to really take shape like in most of Europe rather than in the 1990s had Bush won in '92.

And a more honorable man would have been president, and was much less polarizing than any of his IRL successors, so I think the problem of hate and disrespect of the president wouldn't be there (or would have at least been delayed) had Bush won in '92.

And I think had HW won in '92, the son that would have been pushed to run for president would probably have been Jeb rather than Dubya, given the culture wars wouldn't have been as big of a factor.

At anyrate the country I think would be a lot better off and less divided today had Bush won in '92. I think if there's one election result I would have changed since WWII, it would probably be this one, as I think '92 is when America's trajectory started going downhill (the other contender would be 2012).


Yeah I don't think Oklahoma City happens had Clinton not been president, but afterwards who knows, the conspiracy theorists were doing stuff even when Reagan and Bush were presidents.

Does anyone know why George H. W. Bush picked Dan Quayle as his running-mate instead of Jack Kemp who was also considered on the Veep list in 1988? 

HW probably thought that Quayle had more appeal to the Religious Right and to rural voters.

1989-1997: George W. Bush
1997-2005: Al Gore
2005-2009: John McCain
2009-2017: Barack Obama
2017-2021: Donald J. Trump
2021-2025 : Joe Biden
2025-... : Democratic primary challenger vs Republican

Elections:
1992: Bush - Clinton - Perot
1996: Al Gore - Dole - Perot
2000: Al Gore - Bush
2004: McCain - Kerry
2008: Obama - McCain
2012: Obama - Romney
2016: Trump - Warren
2020: Biden - Trump
2024: O'Rourke - Haley
(2028: O'Rourke - Cruz)

No Republican Revolution
Republicans would have had to deal with Balkan wars and the Rwanda Genocide. Bob Dole and Dan Quayle as candidates. Al Gore wins.
Hillary Clinton wouldn't have become famous (or to a less extent), and it would ruin her future prospects of ever becoming a senator, president and ...
Al Gore re-elects, and has to deal with 9/11. Democrats will get criticized. Republicans will make use of fear and win 2002 elections bigly.
Iraq War wouldn't have happened
The popular John McCain wins in 2005, with a more interventionist / active foreign policy platform
2007-2008 crisis happens. McCain's wars / interventionism will make him very unpopular.
Obama wins in an even bigger landslide in 2009 landslide, after not being contested by Clinton and after having a clear win.
2010 / 2012 / 2014 would all be similar to current timeline.
Donald J. Trump wins in 2016 but not against Hillary Clinton but against Elizabeth Warren.
Sanders wouldn't have run in 2016. Progressive left would've been weaker in this timeline and as Warren is defeated in 2016, Biden and Harris become front-runners in 2021. I believe Biden would win the primary, win the general election, but be defeated again in 2025 (not run for re-election or be unpopular and be defeated in a primary.)

Reaganism burns out thanks to getting 16 years in power as opposed to OTL's 1) avoiding burnout 2) lucking out and getting the most neoliberal/free market/conservative democrat who could get through the primaries.

That's not the case in this timeline. Mario Cuomo or some other liberal/center left(I said center-left not "centrist" so not clinton/gore/gephart) who can come off as not an aging hippie is the dem's guy in 1996. Cuomo, followed by Kerry.

We're probably in the middle of 12-16 years of TTL's second conservative moment, but at least with fewer silent/GI voters and boomers having long since aged out of raising their own kids it'd be significantly less prudish than say the Reaganites or even Bill Clinton were. Call it say 2012-2024 or 2028 for the timeframe i'm talking about.

Democratic victory in '96, no questions asked. I have extreme doubts that the Republicans could pull off four, let alone five, elections in a row. Maybe we could have a President Gore win there?

If Bush won in 1992, it would certainly make for a much more different game in 1996, no doubt about it.

The Republicans would have won four presidential elections in a row, and the retirement of the old Southern Democrats allows them to claim the House of Representatives and Senate in 1994. If Bush wins in 1992, the Republicans also get to achieve a 9—0 advantage on the Supreme Court – once Byron White retires, there would have been zero Democratic appointees left on the Court. Although White was probably the most conservative Democratic appointee since James Clark McReynolds, Bush would certainly have wanted to replace him with someone even further to the right, and so would most of the rich businessmen who fund the Republican Party. Even if White and/or Harry Blackmun had stayed on the bench until the 1996 election, there is no certainty of a Democratic appointee from that election.

Under such conditions, and with urban communities of color perceived as increasingly threatening during the 1990s due to the (real and perceived) violence of rap music, it is easy to imagine that the Republicans would go all out to completely disenfranchise such communities, to the extent of reducing voter turnout there to below the pre-Smith v. Allright South. In The Psychopathology of American Capitalism, Thomas Paul Bonfiglio argues that these urban communities of color are actually truly disenfranchised. This is not merely because so many (up to one-third) cannot vote due to felony convictions or actual incarceration, but because poor urban communities of color absolutely require a mass radical left party (revolutionary socialist) to represent them, while the US media, big business and the extremely racist attitudes of poorer whites simply forbid one developing. (Citizens United was designed to prevent a mass radical left party, which will necessarily have limited funds as radical left ideals are designed to expropriate the very wealthy to the last cent, from developing.)

Achieving such complete voter suppression will not be easy, but I can imagine a Republican Party holding all branches of government as investing heavily in working out how to completely reverse gains in nonwhite voter participation back to before Smith.

Alongside, and related to, using much more complete voter suppression (and potentially 15th amendment repeal if they had the ability) to stay in power, a more vigorous culture war would have been likely, and one waged from the White House. The view of free people of color as ipso facto deviant is so deeply engrained in US culture – at least white US culture – that a much larger war is likely, not a delayed culture war, and with much more Republican power established.

The Waco Siege and Somalia might not happen.

If the Republican Revolution is delayed until 1998, it wouldn’t result in all those “law and order” policies because “law and order” wasn’t an issue in 1998 or later. If W isn’t elected Governor until 1998, he wouldn’t be ready for the Presidency in 2000. A Democrat who’s first elected in 1996 would be re-elected on “peace and prosperity” in 2000, putting a Democrat in control of foreign policy in 2001-2004  (which likely means more effort to capture or kill Bin Laden and less regime change).

The Democrat in 1996 also wouldn’t be ridden with sex scandals.

As I said, law and order will still be an issue, in part because the extremely radical urban culture of the late 1980s and early 1990s would mean that law and order would remain part of the Republicans’ mid-term campaign.

If it is felt that the GOP has not done a good job on law and order, it actually could, contra my previous post, delay the “Republican Revolution”. If law and order did not improve after 1994, it would certainly give a moderate Democrat a chance of winning in 1996, but what they would have to do to solve a real or perceived crime problem is an interesting question.

If conditions of law and order do improve, I could see the Republicans, with a 9—0 Supreme Court majority, recruiting Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia as running mate (https://talkelections.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=406419.msg7678470#msg7678470), something which Bob Dole apparently considered but which would certainly be more realistic had Bush Senior been re-elected. Scalia’s hardcore ideological conservatism might be considered extremely valuable with a more intense culture war as I predicted in my previous post, and it would be difficult for Clinton to gain the support he did in many rural counties of Appalachia and the Midwest.

I don't see how President George Bush could have won re-election in 1992 considering all the headwinds he faced.  How does one overcome a tepid 'jobless recovery' and his breaking of his 'read my lips: no new taxes' pledge, and still win re-election, especially after 12 years of unbroken Republican control of the White House?  I can't think of a plausible way.  You cannot control the economic cycle, and Bush could not have been elected in 1988 had he not made that infamous pledge, considering how lackluster conservative support was for him until he did.  And he had little choice but to break the pledge if he didn't want to cut entitlement programs during congressional negotiations in 1990.  And it didn't help matters that he had a prior reputation as a moderate within the Republican Party who called Ronald Reagan's regulation-, spending-, and tax- cutting economic philosophy 'voodoo economics' during the 1980 GOP primaries.  As a direct result, conservatives would not give him as much leeway to tactically raise taxes the way they had done with President Reagan.

George Bush was damned if he did, and damned if he didn't.  I feel sorry for him, in a way.

The only way Republicans could have held on to the White House in 1992 was if several factors fell into place:

1. President George Bush decides not to run for re-election -after all he was having health issues, and was leaning towards retirement anyway until he was talked out of it.

2. Congressman Jack Kemp (I choose him as the GOP savior because he seems the best, most logical candidate to carry on Reagan's legacy for another four years) ultimately decided not to serve in the Bush cabinet in 1988/89, and stays in the House, maintaining his distance and independence from whatever happened in the administration.

3. Vice-President Dan Quayle either decides not to run or is primaried by Jack Kemp in the 1992 primaries.  

Then Republicans would have had more than a fighting chance on keeping the White House until January 1997.

reaganism burns out in 96 or 00. dems much less reagan republican-lite and more socially/econ "left".

Bush only lost the tipping point state by 4.5 points so it’s very possible against a more conventional democratic candidate he’d have won .


Clinton on the other hand not only was an unconventional candidate where the old GOP playbook was useless but ran arguably the greatest general election campaign in modern history

Mario Cuomo is elected President in 1996.