Red, Green, and Blue
The brief uptick in support that had ensured President Bush's re-election ended very quickly after it began. By May 1993, the poor economy officially entered a recession. Soon afterwards, the post-Soviet conflicts in states across the communist world led to a refugee crisis of unprecedented proportions across East Asia, Central Asia and parts of Eastern Europe. The president, faced with the largest humanitarian crisis since World War II, sent American troops into the effected areas. Operation Guardian Watch became the largest non-combat deployment in American history and the goodwill generated have been described as Bush's greatest legacy.
This was in the future however, and by 1996, Americans were tired of the struggling economy and the president continuing to say that the situation in many of the areas troops had been sent to were "too volatile" to withdraw the military, most of those deployed there had long since become tired of guarding refugee camps and waiting for the rare piece of deployment off-base to rescue more refugees.
Vice President Quayle's attempt at a presidential bid was quietly smothered in its infancy and the Republicans selected Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, who felt this was his last chance to obtain the Oval Office. Dole was forced to pick a strong conservative, House Republican Leader Bob Livingston of Louisiana, as his running mate.
The Progressives nominated young Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, whose charisma and inability for scandal to stick to him gave him the nickname "Slick Billy". Clinton's primary rival, Tennessee Senator Al Gore, was given the vice-presidential bid as a way to unite the party and put forth a youthful image to contrast to the septuagenarian Dole. The Democrats re-nominated Ross Perot, who surprised voters by picking controversial Democratic Congressman Virgil Goode as his running mate.
Sixteen years of Republican rule had left voters hungry for a change, but Clinton was nearly undone when several allegations of sexual impropriety with his gubernatorial aides came forward. Damage control was limited, but then Livingston himself, the Dole campaign's chief attack dog on the issue, was caught by reporters
in flagrante delicto with his mistress in late September 1996.
With the Republicans in disarray, Clinton twisted the knife. Promising to return the soldiers "home with honor" and kick-start the economy, the Arkansas governor crushed Dole in the debates (Perot performed remarkably well, but his presence was ignored by most commentators). Clinton won in a landslide, shattering Reagan's record for most electoral votes and taking advantage of Nebraska's new congressional district system for allocating its electoral votes to win one vote from the reliable Republican state.
Red, Green, and Blue
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