Victor Davis Hanson: 1992 Election Warns GOP It Must Sell Its Economic Record Before the Midterms

Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words” from Daily Signal senior contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to Victor Davis Hanson’s own YouTube channel to watch past episodes.

Sami Winc: Quickly, on Donald Trump’s speech, I thought some of the more strident things were that he basically was showing we entered a new era. We’re beyond the Cold War paradigm, and we’re into a whole new paradigm, and I think he’s right about it, where our strategic interests are going to play out for us on the world stage. 

And then, yeah, I was wondering about… I thought that was a great speech. 

Victor Davis Hanson: I’m really worried about the midterms, not because of the record, but because they’re not getting the message out. And I know we’re going to talk about the midterms, but it reminds me so much of 1992. George H.W. Bush was running for reelection. The recession, the ’90-’91 recession, kind of caused by a similar thing, the First Gulf War, where there was a disruption. The Kuwaiti oil fields were up in, everybody panicked. It caused a recession. 

And three things happened. Three things happened. They’re all instructive for this year, for the midterms. 

Number one, the Democrats demagogued the economy. So Al Gore stormed the country and said, “This is the worst recession since the Great Depression.” James Carville, “It’s economy, stupid.” Bill Clinton, “I just want to say we’re, we’re in depression level.” 

And then you looked at the actual data. The economy in 1992 grew by 3.5%, not two quarters. The recession had been over for a year and a half. 

Number two, the inflation, despite the oil spikes, was about 3.5%. Unemployment was high, about seven, but it was going down. And the stock market, the Standard & Poor’s and the Dow Jones, had gone up by 10% that year. So it was recovering. 

The GDP in ’92 was higher than it was under the first year of Clinton. 

But you know what? They didn’t reply to it. They did not reply to it. 

You know, there were a couple of reasons why they didn’t reply to it. Number one, the architect of the ’88 victory, Lee Atwater, who was a crude guy, and he ran the Willie Horton ads, he ran the Boston Harbor ads, and the thing that sunk [Michael] Dukakis, who left the Democratic Convention nomination with a 17-point lead over George H.W. Bush. 

Lee Atwater said, “I’m gonna take the bark off that guy. I’m gonna take the…” And he did. And they showed that tank ad with that bobblehead helmet. It was so sad. Dukakis was a fine person. I didn’t like what he did, but he won ugly. 

In 1991, when he was getting ready for ’92, he got a brain tumor, and he died at 40 years old. 

And you know what the Republican establishment was? “Woo. We don’t have that embarrassment anymore. We can go back to, we can get back to Jerry Ford and Jimmy Carter, and we’re gonna lose nobly, and that’s what we wanna do. We do not wanna win ugly. We play by the Marquess of Queensberry rules.” 

And so, they didn’t have that guy. 

And then there was a third party, Ross Perot, that sucked off 19% of the vote. So Bill Clinton won by 43%. 

So what I’m getting at in these midterms, if you don’t get the message out about the economy. And what is the message? We just released, as of Sept. 20, we have the lowest poverty rate in history. It’s down to 10.2. We have the lowest child poverty rate in history. 

The Left said, “If you cut DOGE, if DOGE cuts these things, and you uncover all this fraud, and you, you deport illegal aliens, you’re gonna— I mean, we’re gonna spike the poverty rate.” 

No, it had just the opposite effect. It freed up cash for the people who needed it, and the economy is starting to boom. 

And then second, we had the highest per capita income. It went up over 2.6% so far this year. Eighty-seven thousand five hundred. It’s the highest income in the world if you take away artificial incomes like the Swiss, tax-free foreign investment, or tax havens like Liechtenstein, or the petro, you know, like Saudi or UAE, just major industrial nations. It’s not even close, 8,700. 

And we’re not hearing that. 

And then the Atlanta Federal Reserve just issued its third-quarter, and that would be for July, August, September. September’s not over. 

And guess what they said? We guessed on… Based on the data that we have for 90% of the third quarter ending, we predict when it’s ended, the economy, the GDP, will have grown at an annual rate of 5.1. That is blistering. 

So my point is, the economy is sound, and we have a little blip, as George H.W. Bush in ’92 did after the ’91 war because of the oil price. Same thing. Oil’s up to about $4.50 a gallon. It was down to almost $3. 

But you’d think that would spike inflation, but the inflation rate is still about 3%. It’s a little high, but you’d think it would go, that shows you that all those tax reductions, all those deregulations, the trillion dollars of foreign investment, the deportation of 500,000 criminals, and the vast reduction in the… well, all of that is synchronistic. 

And what it shows you, even with high oil prices at $100-plus a barrel, the inflation rate didn’t spike. 

And so when this war is over, and I think it’s gonna be over pretty soon because this regime is getting desperate, when it collapses or whatever negotiation follows, you’re gonna have a glut of oil on there, and it’s going to take off. 

But they need to say that. 

And then the other thing about it, very quickly, is what happened in ’92. And this is my example, and I’m doing this by memory, but what happened in ’92 was George Bush had a fantastic foreign record. 

He came in in ’89, and he oversaw the end of the Cold War because [Ronald] Reagan had broken the Soviet Union, but he didn’t get credit for it. The Berlin Wall fell in ’89 during Bush’s first year. 

But he did navigate. There were calls for people to punish the Soviet Union or to put NATO right on the frontier. And he was very careful about that. He got criticized about that, but he navigated very well. 

And everybody said, if you remember the ’91 Gulf War, they said, “Saddam Hussein has 3,000 tanks. He’s taken Kuwait. It’s gone. Just let it go.” 

And Bush himself wavered a little bit. And remember Margaret Thatcher said, “Don’t go wobbly on me, George.” 

But he came around. And that was a brilliant campaign. 

You have to give credit to Colin Powell and Dick Cheney and George H.W. Bush and Norman Schwarzkopf. Very few casualties. They did what they wanted. 

I had criticized him because they left him in power and we had to go back. But the point is, he had a lot of foreign-policy achievements, like [Donald] Trump does, flipping all of Latin America so there’s only five communist countries left, reinstating the Monroe Doctrine, getting Greenland basically in a brilliant move so that Denmark can brag to everybody that it owns Greenland. 

And the Greenlanders are going to say, “Yes, we’re sovereign and independent and we’re Denmark, but we’re also going to be infused with billions of dollars of U.S. bases and trade and everything. And the Russians and the Chinese are going to be out.” 

And it’s all done. 

And the same thing with NATO, boosting NATO. So now it’s spending 2% and 3% GDP, and it wouldn’t do that before. 

And if he wins the Iran war, and I think he will, that whole Middle East will flip. 

But all of that’s going to be disguised and covered and forgotten unless they say there is good economic… 

I know we have a problem with affordability, but it’s temporary. But look at the poverty rate, look at the income rate, look at the stock market, look at GDP. 

And they’re not doing that. 

And if you don’t do that, you get what I call midterm apostates. These are people in purple states that have to be reelected, and they start distancing themselves. 

And to their credit, Mike Rogers, [Lisa] Murkowski, Susan Collins, all those, and most of the House people, they call up the president, no doubt, and they say, “Look, Don, Mr. President, I’m gonna trash you. I’m gonna say the war’s gone on too long. We’ve gotta, we’ve got to get out. I’m gonna say everything I can to distance myself. Then I’m gonna get elected, then I’m gonna vote for you, 95% of the time.” 

That’s what they’re saying. 

Yeah. But we’ll see. 

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