Presidential Politics: Past as Prologue

"Something was larger than politics."

After a long and bruising campaign where middle America was concerned that the country was in "deep trouble," voters elected a new president. It was a change election that saw the governing party swept from power.

It was November 1992.

Washington Week panelist Haynes Johnson had spent months traveling the country talking to voters about their economic situation, their outlook on the future, and their thoughts on the presidential election. "Everybody you met really did want a change in the beginning. They felt that there was something desperately wrong in the country, like something had been broken," Johnson said. "Something was larger than politics. It had nothing to do with Republicans, Democrats, liberals, conservatives, Northern, Southern. They really did want a change."

But so many Americans at the time never thought change would happen. Cynicism about the electoral process ran deep in the minds of voters, but in the end they had to make a choice. "It wasn't a negative choice," Johnson said, recounting what a 24-year-old voter in Texas had told him. "He said...'A lot of people say he's the lesser of two evils that are running in the campaign, but I see him as a really good choice.'"

While Bill Clinton won the electoral college in a landslide (with 370 electoral votes), he took office having won just 43 percent of the popular vote and had to convince people to follow through on the changes the voters had supported with their vote. "They don't think he's a miracle person," Johnson said, "but they're willing to invest a sense of trust that wasn't there in the beginning."