The United States presidential election of 1992 had three major candidates: Incumbent Republican President George H. W. Bush; Democratic Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, and independent Texas businessman Ross Perot.
Bush had alienated much of his conservative base by breaking his 1988 campaign pledge against raising taxes, the economy was in a recession, and Bush's perceived greatest strength, foreign policy, was regarded as much less important following the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the relatively peaceful climate in the Middle East after the defeat of Iraq in the Gulf War.
Clinton won a plurality in the popular vote, and a wide Electoral College margin. The election was a significant realigning election after three consecutive Republican landslides in presidential elections, as the Democratic Party picked up support in the Northeast, the Great Lakes region, and the West Coast, but carried only six states in Clinton's native South, reaffirming the shift of the region from once solidly Democratic to strongly supporting the Republican party.
Famous quotes containing the words united states, united, states and/or presidential:
“We can beat all Europe with United States soldiers. Give me a thousand Tennesseans, and I’ll whip any other thousand men on the globe!”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)
“Yesterday, December 7, 1941Ma date that will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)
“On September 16, 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire died.”
—Gore Vidal (b. 1925)
“Because of these convictions, I made a personal decision in the 1964 Presidential campaign to make education a fundamental issue and to put it high on the nation’s agenda. I proposed to act on my belief that regardless of a family’s financial condition, education should be available to every child in the United States—as much education as he could absorb.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)