No pre-election re-indictment of Weinberger in 1992

Could this have made a difference in the 1992 election results?

"Independent counsel Walsh had indicted former secretary of defense Caspar Weinberger, but the judge in the case ruled that the indictment was technically flawed and demanded a proper re-indictment within the next month.

"Walsh decided to include specific quotes from Weinberger's notes that had recently been discovered. One note recounted a January 7, 1986, meeting when President Reagan approved a large sale of arms to Iran "in return" for hostages. Weinberger's notes stated that he and Secretary of State Shultz 'opposed,' and then the notes said of Bush, 'VP favored.'

"For five years Bush had denied that he was fully aware of the intensity and extent of the Weinberger-Shultz opposition, and had made general claims that he was 'out of the loop.'

"On Friday morning, October 30, the Bush campaign daily tracking poll had the race a dead heat at 39 percent for Clinton, 39 percent for Bush and 12 percent for independent candidate Ross Perot. That afternoon, Walsh's grand jury voted the new indictment of Weinberger. The first wire story came out about 1 p.m.

"Most news organizations have a strong policy against publishing or airing new issues or charges in the final days of a campaign. But the Weinberger re-indictment was an official grand jury action, and the 'VP favored' was technically new. It was the first documented evidence that Bush had known the arms were a direct exchange for hostages and that Bush had been privy to the strong opposition of Weinberger and Shultz.

"Clinton's running mate, Al Gore, jumped on the issue and used a Watergate analogy, calling it 'a true smoking gun.'

"Bush was on a campaign train in Wisconsin the next day. His daily tracking poll was a shock. Clinton was still at 39 percent, but Bush had dropped 7 percentage points to 32 percent with those 7 points going straight to Perot, putting the Texas billionaire at 19..."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/daily/june99/shadow20full.htm

For a contemporary account (from the *Los Angles Times* of Novemeber 4, 1992, the day after the election), see http://www.mit.edu/afs/net.mit.edu/user/tytso/usenet/americast/latimes/news/47
which states:

"The charge came only days after some polls showed Bush surging. By Sunday, the same polls had Clinton with a comfortable lead again. Some Bush backers blame the apparent turnaround on release of the Iran-Contra notes.

"An exit poll conducted Tuesday by The Times, however, found that, although voters considered the Iran-Contra affair an important issue in their decision, the late revelations did not substantially increase the damage to Bush."

Walsh's defenders have pointed out that the timing of the indictment was the result of a promise by the prosecutor to U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan to return the new charge by the end of October so that the January 5 trial date would not be postponed. Walsh's critics have claimed that Walsh could have asked for an extension of a few days without risking a delay of the trial. There is also a dispute as to how necessary it was to include those particular notes. (The original obstruction-of-Congress charge, which Judge Hogan had dismisssed, was being replaced with a "false statements" charge, based on Weinberger's claim before the House committee that he had not regularly taken daily notes of his meetings. These particular notes were doubtless relelvant to that--but critics argue that there were other portions of the notes, not referring to Bush, that Walsh could have used instead to make the point.)

But in any event let's say that Judge Hogan had given a post-Election Day deadline and that Walsh had delayed releasing the re-indictement--with or without the notes contradicting Bush's account--until then. Would Bush have won? I doubt it. See
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/...rat-bill-clinton-bush-campaign-president-bush published one day before Walsh's "bombshell." Yes, Gallup's poll for CNN and USA Today showed a virtual tie. But...


***

three other surveys, comparable in sample size, timeliness and reputation to the Gallup study, had different results:

- The latest ABC News tracking poll gave Clinton 42 percent to 35 percent for Bush and 20 percent for Perot.
pixel.gif

- A Wall Street Journal-NBC News survey, which had a smaller sample than the others, showed Clinton leading Bush by 43 percent to 36 percent, with 15 percent for Perot, among registered voters sampled, but by a larger 44-33-17 margin among ``likely`` voters.
- A Los Angeles Times Poll gave Clinton a 43-32 lead among registered voters and a 44-34 lead among ``likely`` voters.

One reason the Gallup survey for USA Today and CNN received so much attention was that its results were different, not only from the other surveys but from its own percentages in recent days, when it sampled all registered voters without trying to screen out those unlikely to vote.

This screening is an even less exact science than other aspects of public-opinion polling, and some independent polling experts, none of whom wanted to be identified, wondered whether that poll had somehow screened out too many likely Clinton supporters.

***
All in all I think a 5.6 point lead (which is what Clinton ended up with) is too great to be explained by the Weinberger re-indictment. That is not to deny , however, that without the re-indictment the race might have been closer (which in turn could have changed the results of some close down-ballot races).

Of course if the re-indictment had been delayed and Bush did win, we would be hearing plenty of theories about how Walsh was part of a GOP conspiracy to defeat Clinton. (Remember, Walsh was a Republican...)
 
. . . but Bush had dropped 7 percentage points to 32 percent with those 7 points going straight to Perot, . . .
I think this was one cause of conservative resentment toward Clinton -- the idea that Perot had split the ticket and Clinton had snuck in there.

When in reality, well, there was the study of people in Florida who voted for Nader in 2000. You'd think these people would be even more liberal than the Democrats, of course they are, they voted for Nader. But the study shows no. At most the Nader voters split 60-40 in favor of Gore. Yes, in a razor close election that was enough to make the difference, but not near what you'd think it would be.

The study found the Nader voters were ideologically in the middle. It's like they varied along a different dimension, I think probably how pissed off they were about politics in general. Will post this study below.
 
Last edited:
Did Ralph Nader Spoil a Gore Presidency?
A Ballot-Level Study of Green and Reform Party Voters
in the 2000 Presidential Election

Michael Herron, Jeffrey Lewis, April 24, 2006.

http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/polisci/faculty/lewis/pdf/greenreform9.pdf

' . . . " . . . As a consequence, and we elaborate on this later, the 60% figure we have noted above is an upper bound: at most 60% of Nader voters would have voted for Gore had they faced a two-candidate election [Emphasis added], and at least 40% of the would have chosen Bush. . . '

' . . . collection of 2.95 million Florida county general election ballot images maintained by the National Election Study . . . each ballot image is a sequence of zeroes and ones where a zero reflects a punchcard chad read by an electronic card reader as not having been punched and a one indicates a chad that was read as punched. . . '




Yes, an unexpected result. But these two political scientists looked at down ticket voting on a record of actual ballots. It looks like a good study (so much so that it might actually raise privacy concerns! although I strongly suspect no personal data, and unless you're known as a big Green Party advocate in a very small precinct, etc)
 
Clinton still wins. Re indictment or not, Bush ran a terrible campaign that year and had no vision for what he'd do if given a second term, while Clinton's campaign was solid.
 
. . . Bush ran a terrible campaign that year and had no vision for what he'd do if given a second term, . . .
Bush did not talk about what substantial and positive things he'd do regarding the economy. His campaign was mainly anti-Clinton.

Bush challenges Clinton over 1969 week in Moscow

The Guardian [UK], Martin Walker in Washington, 9 Oct 1992

https://www.theguardian.com/world/1992/oct/09/usa.martinwalker

' . . . The CIA is now, in effect, admitting it knew that United States food trade credits to Iraq were being spent on building up Saddam Hussein's military arsenal until the last weeks before the Gulf war. . . ' <-- don't remember this topic or controversy at all

' . . . But Mr Clinton 's entire student experience, evading the Vietnam draft, taking part in anti-war demonstrations in Britain, and now the Moscow tour, are being conflated by the Republicans as something far more sinister.

'The Republicans are scratching away at those doubts about Mr Clinton 's character which have nagged him since the draft avoidance and Gennifer Flowers scandals earlier this year. . . ' <-- I do remember all these talking points on the part of conservatives very much!
I was 29-years-old at the time of the 1992 election. What I remember before the election and for a year afterwards maybe more is a ton of anger on the part of conservatives that I hadn't seen before.
 
Asking why U.S. conservatives become so angry in '92, '93, '94 is maybe the wrong question to ask.

This article is saying conservatives were very angry at the Cow Palace in San Francisco, esp. at the media, during the 1964 RNC at which Goldwater was nominated, which is what I've heard from other sources.
http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/col...ons-the-1964-rnc-was-declared-ugliest/1244538

So, maybe the question to ask, why were conservatives relatively unangry during the 8-year presidency of Reagan?
 
Last edited:
Top