Hello and welcome to another edition of the presidential election series as I’ll be discussing the Election of 1996, It’s another three way race for the White House as President Clinton goes up against Ross Perot again and the GOP’s Bob Dole…Let’s get into it.
Bill Clinton’s Presidency
After beating George H.W. Bush and Ross Perot in the ’92 general election, President Bill Clinton set his sights on dealing with issues regarding Healthcare, Criminal Justice, LGBTQ people wanting to serve in the military and the Economy while also dealing with foreign conflicts as the first post Cold War Commander-in-Chief.
While Clinton would be able to passed legislation like the Omnibus Crime Bill, the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell…these acts among others were controversial even today as they implemented harsh prison sentences, opened the door for systematic racism to increase among the the black community and began the process of shipping American jobs overseas which led to many states like the Midwest suffering a massive amount of job loss in the decades that followed.
Things got even worse for Clinton when he and his wife, Hillary’s attempts at Health Care Reform in 1993 was not only met with opposition by conservatives but also the insurance and medical companies as well…Leading to the Democrats suffering a massive loss in the ’94 midterm elections in what has been called ‘The Republican Revolution of 1994’ as the GOP regained control of Congress for the first time in 40 years.
Despite all of this, Clinton was able to have some successes on the board like the ’93 Budget Reconciliation Act which gave tax cuts to low income families and small businesses and the economy was doing remarkably better than it had at any point in the early 90’s and because of this Bill Clinton and Al Gore were easily renominated.
Bob Dole: The Experience Candidate
With the Republicans now in charge of Congress, many in the GOP believe they had a chance to regain the White House but they wasn’t a clear front runner and so multiple candidates ran with the three leading figures being Pat Buchannan who ran for the nomination in 1992 but lost, Steve Forbes who was a publishing Executive of Forbes Magazines and finally there was Bob Dole, the Kansas native who was the Senate Majority Leader at the time.
Outside of an episode of Saturday Night Live which included rock band, Rage Against the Machine getting a lifetime band for their display in protesting host Steve Forbes’ presidential bid, the only other notable thing about Forbes 1996 run for the president was that he was running on creating a Flat Income Tax which sadly didn’t get him much momentum heading into the convention.
Buchannan was still riding high following his presidential bid in ’92 and appeared at first to be replicating that success when he defeated the other Republicans in the New Hampshire Primary but also in states like Missouri, Alaska and Louisiana.
Even though this was Dole’s third attempt at securing his party’s nomination for president, the former War Hero turned politician was seen as more of a moderate compared to Buchanan and Forbes and by the Republican National Convention, Bob Dole finally won the GOP’s nomination for president.
His running mate was former football player turned politician, Jack Kemp who was a former U.S Representative from New York and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development who had been penciled in as a likely Vice Presidential pick for the Republicans for many but was also selected to prevent libertarians and paleoconservatives like Pat Buchannan from leaving to run as a third party candidate.
Perot Is Back!
After his solid performance in the popular vote but failing to win an electoral votes in 1992, Ross Perot returned to run as a third party candidate in the next election under the newly created Reform Party which was a political party that Perot and many of his supporters created as a third party alternative to the Democrats and Republicans which went along with many of the businessman’s policy ideas.
Although he initially had no interest in running for president again, the Federal Election Commission announced that the Reform Party would get federal campaign funds if Perot ran for president and so he did, easily winning the party’s nomination with Pat Choate, an economist from Texas as his running mate.
If folks were hoping to see Perot repeat the same thing he did in ’92 but this time actually win electoral votes then they were thoroughly disappointed when it was revealed that the Commission of Presidential Debates changed it’s rules which prevented Perot from being able to appear on the presidential debate stage and subsequently lead to his poll numbers taking a hit…Also the Commission of Presidential Debates was run by Democrats and Republicans unless you need further proof of how much the two major parties really tried to rig it against burgeoning third party/independent candidates go forward.
The Campaigns
With Ross Perot’s influence massively reduced in this election, Bill Clinton was ahead in the polls for the majority of the race and he was successful in tying Bob Dole to the GOP Congress and the conservative Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich who were very unpopular following a government shutdown in 1995 and a proposed conservative health care plan called “The Contract with America” where many blamed the Republicans over Clinton.
In fact, Clinton had adapted a ‘Triangulation’ strategy even before the race officially got underway. Triangulation in terms of politics meant that you could come off more as a centrist politician who supported the ideas of both Democrats and Republicans thereby making it impossible for people to label him as a Far Left ‘Liberal’ or a Right Wing ‘Conservative’.
Clinton also didn’t directly attack the 73 old Bob Dole about his age but rather question the age of his ideas which is best seen with the president’s campaign slogan of “Bridge to the Future” which was in contrast with Dole’s “Bridge to the Past”.
Bob Dole for most of the campaign had to convince a large sum of Americans that despite his age and long tenure in politics, he was able to appeal to younger votes and needless to say this didn’t work out so well.
From falling off a stage during an event in California to calling the Los Angeles Dodgers the “Brooklyn Dodgers” to bring up the fact that his generation fought in World War Two just made Dole come off as really out of touch and a liability when it came to his age…however he did release his medical records to show how good his health was after the fall and jokingly mentioned the reason he fell in California was due to the fact he was trying to do the Macarena.
Despite a getting a boost in the polls after stepping down from his position as Senate Majority Leader and his performances in the presidential debates, most saw Clinton was the likely winner right into election day…Speaking of which, let’s look at the results.
The Results
As you can see from the electoral map, Bill Clinton easily won re-election winning 31 states and D.C., getting 379 electoral votes and 49.2% of the popular vote making him the last Southern Democrat to win re-election since Woodrow Wilson and the last president to win a second term with less than 50% of the popular vote.
Bob Dole won 19 states and got 159 electoral votes, plus 40.7% of the popular vote; Dole would soon retire from politics after this election and would get involved in ventures like writing and TV, but have the occasional flourish with politics before passing away on December 5th 2021 at the age of 98.
Much like the previous election, Ross Perot came in third place with no electoral votes but had an even worse showing in the popular vote with 8.4%, although it would be the last time an independent or third party candidate got more than 3% of the popular vote.
A lawsuit was later filed on Perot’s behalf against the Commission of Presidential Debates, but nothing really came of it; Ross Perot would die on July 9th 2019 at the age of 89.
With this victory, President Clinton became the first Democrat to do so since Franklin D. Roosevelt and become the youngest re-elected president at 50 years at two months old.
And that was the election of 1996, Bill Clinton has decisively won re-election and his looking to take America into a new economic golden age as the new millennial is on the horizon, but so are some pretty big scandals…more on that in the next election.
Be sure to follow me on X @FullertonHakeem for more articles just like this and you can follow this site also on X, @Distorti0nMedia…and I will you see next time.