Presidential Election 1996

When we look at the Presidential Election of 1996, we must go back to 1994.  In this year, Bill Clinton seemed to be doing everything wrong, most notably having his wife head the team to help bring about health care reform.  Between that and that Whitewater scandal and the suicide of Vince Foster in 1993, the Republican Party for the first time since 1954 controlled both houses of Congress.  On the afternoon after, while Bill Clinton looked like the defeated President, aides said in 2001 that they could see the wheels in his head plotting a comeback.

As 1995 began, Newt Gingrich became Speaker of the House and Bob Dole became the Senate Majority Leader.  Gingrich was seen as a rock star around Washington, DC, a new King of the Hill, so to speak.  Things were looking so bad for President Clinton that on April 18, 1995, the President held a press conference letting the media and the world know that the President is still relevant.

The next day, Clinton got his second wind where at 9:02AM CDT, a Ryder Truck was parked outside of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City when a bomb went off.  168 people, including six of whom were children and including three pregnant women.  Like Ronald Reagan before him in 1986, Bill Clinton had a Challenger Moment and became the Consoler in Chief.  A week or so later, Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole would officially declare himself a candidate for the Republican Nomination for President declaring that Bill Clinton was a draft dodger and that he was a war hero.

As 1995 wore on, there were threats of a government shutdown.  The President wanted his things, the Republicans in Congress wanted theirs.  The main fight was over things like Medicare.  On November 14, 1995, in the 11th hour, negotiations went nowhere and starting on November 15, 1995, all nonessential federal employees were furloughed.  This meant too, at the White House where White House interns were doing the work that furloughed staff normally did.  This would be the beginning of a scandal that impeached a president three years later as while under oath in a civil deposition in January 1998 lied about a relationship Clinton had with White House Intern, Monica Lewinsky.

Negotiations went rather quickly even though Speaker Gingrich wanted them to drag on longer.  Senator Dole wanted a compromise at the earliest possibility so that he could go out and run for president.  In these negotiations, as Leon Panetta would later say, Clinton went to Speaker Gingrich stating that he could not go along with what he wanted.  He said that he didn't believe in it, and if it cost him re-election, then so be it.  At that moment, Panetta thought to himself, "He gets it."  After starring eye ball to eye ball, and the shutdown going into 1996, the Republicans in Congress blinked.  President Clinton won that battle.

Riding on a wave of new confidence and with the help of a shadow advisor known around the West Wing as "Charlie", Dick Morris, Bill Clinton declared that the Era of Big Government was over.  The President, with Morris' secret advisement cherry picked safe issues to run on in 1996 like school uniforms and Welfare Reform.

By June 1996, it was pretty clear that Bob Dole was the presumptive nominee for the Republican Party.  In order to give full-time attention to the campaign for President, he resigned his seat in the United States Senate on June 11, 1996.  The speech saying farewell was heartfelt and gracious.  It smacked of phrases and words that only a member of the last great Senate from 1977 to 1981 would say; praising colleagues on both sides of the aisle.

In the end, there really was no contest, even with Ross Perot in as he formed a new political party known as the Reform Party.  Bill Clinton and Al Gore won the election with 379 Electoral Votes or 47,401,185 Popular Votes to Bob Dole and Jack Kemp's 159 Electoral Votes or 39,197,469 Popular Votes to Ross Perot and Pat Choate's zero Electoral Votes or 8,085,294 Popular Votes.  Bill Clinton who received in 1992, 43.0 percent of the vote had hoped in 1996 he would receive 51 percent.  He failed in that goal by only receiving 49.2 percent of the vote.  He never got that majority mandate he had hoped for.

During the campaign, Senator Dole made use of referring to himself in the third person.  Saturday Night Live had fun with that to the point that after the Election, the Senator went on SNL just before Thanksgiving giving an example of how he would answer the phone at the American Red Cross.

A fitting ending to this campaign should serve as the model of how two political rivals for the presidency not as a Democrat or a Republican, but first, as Americans.  On January 17, 1997, just three days before the second Clinton/Gore term, the President awarded Former Senator Dole on behalf of a grateful nation the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

In his Acceptance of the distinguished award, Senator Dole started off with the first seven words of the Oath of Office, citing the wrong speech and joking about receiving the keys to the front door of the White House, and that he too had a dream.  But to be serious in his remarks, the Senator graciously wished the President, the First Lady, the Vice President, and the Second Lady the best for a second four years.

This election marked the end of a generation, the Greatest Generation from ever seeking the presidency since John F. Kennedy took office in 1961.  One just wonders if the Baby Boomers will do the same when it comes time for Generation X to lead the nation.

See also:

• Presidential Election 1940
• Presidential Election 1944
• Presidential Election 1948
• Presidential Election 1952
• Presidential Election 1956
• Presidential Election 1960
• Presidential Election 1964
• Presidential Election 1968
• Presidential Election 1972
• Presidential Election 1976
• Presidential Election 1980
• Presidential Election 1984
• Presidential Election 1988
• Presidential Election 1992
• Presidential Election 1996
• Presidential Election 2000
• Presidential Election 2004
• Presidential Election 2008
• Presidential Election 2012
• Presidential Election 2016
• Presidential Election 2020
• Presidential Election 2024