Abstract
In 1992, Bill Clinton’s political advisor James Carville sought to distill his candidate’s message down to a single phrase as the Arkansas governor challenged the incumbent president, George H. W. Bush. The first President Bush was widely regarded as an able practitioner of foreign policy after expelling Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in 1991, but a sluggish economy was weakening his political standing. Carville coined the phrase, “It’s the Economy, Stupid,” and Clinton went on to win a three-way race for the presidency against Bush and independent billionaire Ross Perot, who garnered an impressive 19 percent of the popular vote. Discontent with the economy helped Clinton become the first Democrat in sixteen years to win a presidential election.
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Notes
On the 2002 elections, see Gary C. Jacobson, “Terror, Terrain, and Turnout,” Political Science Quarterly, 188: 3 (2003), 1–22.
Also see, Donald Beachler, “Ordinary Events and Extraordinary Times: The 2002 Congressional Elections,” in Jon Kraus, Kevin J. McMahon, David M. Rankin, eds., Transformed By Crisis: The Presidency of George W. Bush and American Politics ( New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004 ).
James E. Campbell and James C. Garand, eds., Before the Vote: Forecasting American National Elections ( Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2000 ).
For a discussion of Gore’s loss despite the favorable economic conditions in 2000, see James E. Campbell, “The 2000 Presidential Election of George W. Bush: The Difficult Birth of a Presidency,” in Kraus, McMahon, and Rankin, eds. Transformed by Crisis.
Charles Lindblom, Politics and Markets: The World’s Political Economic Systems ( New York: Harper Collins, 1980 ).
Ira Katznelson, Mark Kesselman, and Alan Draper, The Politics of Power: A Critical Introduction to American Government, Fourth edition ( New York: Wadsworth, 2002 ).
Andrew Hacker, Money: Who Has How Much and Why ( New York: Scribner, 1997 ).
The literature on American Exceptionalism is vast. For one particularly good explanatory essay, see Martin Shefter, “Trade Unions and Political Machines: The Organization and Disorganization of the Working Class in the 19th Century,” in Martin Shefter, ed., Political Parties and the State: The American Historical Experience ( Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993 ).
Theda Skocpol, Boomerang: Health Care Reform and the Turn against Government ( New York: W.W. Norton, 1997 ).
John B. Judis and Ruy Texeira, “Movement Interruptus,” The American Prospect, 16: 1 (2004).
The economic aspects of presidential elections are discussed in James E. Campbell, The American Campaign: U.S. Presidential Campaigns and the National Vote (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 2000). See chapter 6.
Milton C. Cummings, Jr., “Political Change Since the New Deal: The 1992 Presidential Election in Historical Perspective,” in Harvey L. Schantz, ed., American Presidential Elections: Process, Policy and Political Change ( Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996 ).
On 1996 and presidential elections and economics generally, see Walter Dean Burnham, “Bill Clinton: Riding the Tiger,” in Gerald M. Pomper, ed., The Election of 1996: Reports and Interpretations ( Chatham, NJ: Chatham House Publishers, 1997 ).
For a well-articulated version of this concept, see Robert Reich, The Work of Nations: Preparing Ourselves for 21st Century Capitalism ( New York: Vintage, 1995 ).
Jan Leighley and Jonathan Nagler, “Socio-economic Class Bias in Turnout,” American Political Science Review 86 (1992), 725–736.
For the deficit politics of the first year of the Reagan administration, see William Greider, The Education of David Stockman and Other Americans ( New York: Dutton, 1982 ).
Ron Suskind, The Price of Loyalty: The Education of Paul O’Neill ( New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004 ).
Harold Meyerson, “Buckeye Blues,” The American Prospect, 15: 10 (2004), 14.
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© 2005 Kevin J. McMahon, David M. Rankin, Donald W. Beachler, and John Kenneth White
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Beachler, D.W. (2005). The Economy and Domestic Policy. In: Winning the White House, 2004. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403980861_3
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