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

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 percent.

By February 1992, an obscure Arkansas governor, Bill Clinton, emerged as the favorite Democratic nominee. But he was written off as having little chance to knock off the popular Republican incumbent president with 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.

By the 1992 election, the U.S. was headed to full recovery.

In the last six months of 1992, GDP rebounded at over an astonishing 4 percent. The inflation rate in the months before the election was often less than 3 percent.

Even stubborn unemployment was starting to fall to 7.3 percent. The eight-month recession officially ended in March 1991, followed by continual positive economic growth.

No matter. The brilliant Clinton campaign still ran on the directive "It's the economy, stupid" and the slogan "Putting people first."

The Clinton........

© Townhall