From: wdstarr@athena.mit.edu (William December Starr)
Subject: "George Bush lost this the old-fashioned way..."
Organization: Northeastern Law, Class of '93
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 13:30:47 GMT


A collection, in no particular order, of sound-bites and anecdotes on
some of the causes and effects of the Bush loss/Clinton victory...
some may find this interesting.

============

"George Bush lost this the old-fashioned way; he earned it."

-- Martin Anderson, NIxon and Reagan White House aide, quoted in the
   Boston Globe, 11/4/92, p.21.

============

   "He was the king of the mountain after the Persian Gulf War.  He
could have achieved almost anything.  He was so popular that if he had
drawn up a program, gone to Capitol Hill and battled for it, Congress
would not have dared defy him.  But he didn't do anything at all."

   J. Robinson West, a Republican who served in the Ford and Reagan
   administrations, quoted in the New York Times, 11/4/92, p.B3.

============

   12:15 a.m. Monday, Cherry Hill, New Jersey: Clinton's bus brigade
crossed the finish line at the Garden State Racetrack as they drove
into an exuberant fireworks-and-fanfare rally...  Before leaving the
raceway, Clinton posed in the cold rain with a two-year-old trotter
named Bubba Clinton, who had won a race earlier that week at the
long-shot odds of 37 to 1.  Asked what the horse had told him, Clinton
said, "Just run hard."

-- reported in Time, 11/16/92, p.44.

============

   Bush's chief of staff and longtime friend, James A. Baker 3d, who
early in the day [Monday November 2nd] reminisced with the president
about their many campaigns together, laughed off a question about
whether he would do anything differently if he had this campaign to
run over again.

   "Heck, no," Baker said.  "Why should we do anything different when
we are winning?"

-- reported in the Boston Globe, 11/3/92, p.11.

============

   "Had President Bush won, Quayle would have gotten a lot of credit
for retaining the conservative wing and for presenting the Republican
side during the debate,,, That would have gone a long way toward
rehabilitating him within the party.  Without the vice presidency,
though, it's difficult to envision a scenario in which he gets the
nomination [in 1996].  In that sense, Gore has a future and Quayle
doesn't."

-- David Keene, GOP consultant, in the Boston Globe, 11/4/92, p.25.

============

"The only affirmative statement you can make is that the country
expelled George Bush.  You have to start with the fact that this is a
negative mandate, and [Clinton] has to turn it into a positive one."

-- Curtis Gans, director of the Center for the Study of the American
   Electorate, quoted in the Boston Globe, 11/4/92, p.26

============

"For years the Republican party suffered from Herbert Hoover.  Reagan
tried to repair that, but now Bush has made us the party not only of
Herbert Hoover but Billy Sunday."

-- Michael Deaver, on the effect of the 1992 Republican convention,
   quoted in the New York Times 11/4/92, p.B3.

============

"The voters who created the Reagan coalition abandoned Mr. Bush in '92
because they were never loyal to him; they were loyal to the beliefs
he espoused from 1981 through 1989...  Serious people in public life
stand for things and fight for them; the ensuing struggle is meant to
yield progress and improvement.  Mr. Bush seemed embarrassed to
believe.  It left those who felt sympathy for him embarrassed to
support him.

[ * * * ]

"Finally, on the Republican side, the myth of the great campaign
tacticians was revealed.  A lot of them were jockeys who won because
the horse they rode was fast.  Ronald Reagan carried them across the
finish line, they didn't carry him.  When they rode George Bush, they
failed, because he couldn't win for them."

-- Peggy Noonan, "Why Bush Failed," New York Times 11/5/92, p.A35.

============

   "It's him.  He's a guy who thought he was a great politician
because he had been the national party chairman and because he knew
the name of every national committeeman and state party chairman.  But
he never understood what was going on in the country.  Ronald Reagan
was never a state party chairman and he didn't know the names of any
committeemen, but he always knew where the country was."

-- Ed Rollins, quoted in the New York Times 11/5/92, p.B5.

============

-- William December Starr <wdstarr@athena.mit.edu>
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