U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaigners should not repeat the same mistake as George H.W. Bush

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As the 1992 U.S. campaign approached, incumbent president George H.W. Bush was seen as a shoo-in for re-election. 

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The First Gulf War ended in 1991 with a spectacular U.S. victory at the head of a coalition that had expelled Saddam Hussein from Kuwait with few losses. 

For much of 1991, Bush’s approval ratings hovered between 90% and 70%. 

By February 1992, an obscure Arkansas governor, Bill Clinton, emerged as the favourite Democratic nominee. However, he was written off as having little chance to defeat the popular Republican incumbent president, who had far more foreign affairs experience. 

Bush, however, had just lost his brilliant 1988 campaign manager, Lee Atwater, to cancer. And third-party prairie-fire candidate Ross Perot had entered the race, drawing off conservative Bush support. 

Most importantly, in 1990, the U.S. economy had experienced a mild recession that had bottomed out in early 1991. 

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