Why Did George H.W. Bush Fail to Win a Second Term?

Although President Bush was a very successful president in terms of foreign relations he had some struggles that really caught up to him when it was time for re-election. After his successes in the gulf war he had the second highest approval rating amongst all presidents with a rating of 89%. This is only behind his son’s 91% approval rating after the 9/11 attacks on the world trade center. It is obvious that these ratings are not directly correlated with how well the president does throughout his campaign though as George W. Bush also had the lowest rating of 17%. In the start of George H.W. Bush’s campaign he made a statement of, “read my lips, no new taxes!” Without knowing at the time, this line would bring up a whole lot of trouble for Bush. While the president’s main focus lied with foreign affairs, he was unable to put a whole lot of effort into dealing with domestic affairs and this caused the economy to continue to struggle. Therefore, when Bush was unable to make policies to stimulate the economy he was left with no other option but to increase taxes and going against his previous tax statement. This upset the majority of people and while he was around for the end of the cold war then also with the successes in the gulf war people were not very worried with foreign affairs as much anymore. This lie the president was forced to put himself through would ultimately be the demise of his chances in receiving a second term. When he lied, he lost a good chunk of followers from his own party which then jumped on board with the independent candidate of Ross Perot. Perot was able to receive a fair amount of votes just due to the angry conservationists jumping on board with Perot because they didn’t want to vote for a democrat. He also lost his once democratic followers that liked Reagan and therefore wanted Bush as the next president so that was more votes Clinton was able to take away. It is believed by many that without Perot receiving the amount