- A new breeze is blowing,
and a world refreshed by freedom seems reborn.
- A column of tanks is heading towards the Russian parliament.
- There is no place for lawless aggression
in the new world order that we seek to create.
- Unemployment will be growing again by election day.
- I will not sell out to anybody but to the American people.
- I believe with all my heart
that together we can rekindle that American dream.
- The day of the dictator is over.
[explosion]
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[crowd cheering]
- What more fitting close to 1989
than a party at the Berlin Wall.
Thousands of people have gathered at the wall,
many of them armed with hammers and chisels to chip away
at the remnants of a communist system
that seemed to collapse overnight.
- This enormous celebration, which was spontaneous,
overshadowed the official ceremony attended
by the leaders of both East and West Germany.
- President Bush sent a signal to Mikhail Gorbachev today.
There will be no gloating from the White House
over the developments in East Germany.
I was in the Oval Office as part of a pool
when the wall came down.
You don't seem elated,
and I'm wondering if you're thinking of the problems--
Bush basically said, in effect,
"I'm not gonna poke Gorbachev in the eye."
- President George H.W. Bush did come into his presidency
in the shadow of Ronald Reagan.
But maybe we had elected the right man at the right time,
because he was an internationalist.
- You had 50 years of the Cold War,
two visions of the world locked in combat,
and then suddenly,
a whole world of totalitarian rule began to fall.
Bush was quite cautious.
He was really aware that even subtle messages
from the United States could indicate all sorts of things.
- When the wall fell in Berlin the questions were numerous.
I mean, right away, what's going to become of Europe?
- Bulgaria's under a state of alert this morning.
Anti-communist protestors set fire to the headquarters
of Bulgaria's governing socialist party and chanted,
"Let the communists burn."
- Tens of thousands of ordinary citizens
stormed the headquarters of the hated secret police tonight.
- The scenes in this moment are incredibly dramatic.
People in the streets, proclaiming freedom.
Some of that was liberation.
Some of it had a darker side.
- Romania's dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu,
the last hardline leader in the Warsaw Pact,
has been deposed by a popular uprising.
- Romania was the most repressive
and the most grotesque of all the East European regimes.
The only way to overthrow this regime
turned out to be by force.
- Fierce fighting erupted in Bucharest.
The old guard is fighting the new people.
All hell has broken loose.
- Romanian television offered graphic evidence today
of the fate of deposed leader Ceausescu.
- The Ceausescus had been made to stand trial on Christmas Day.
[shouting in foreign language]
- In the end he got the kind of justice that he had
dealt out to many of his subjects.
- At the end of this remarkable week,
a week of bloodshed in Romania and elsewhere,
comes a reminder tonight of what this struggle is all about.
It's about freedom.
And the reminder comes from Berlin.
- Germany was not just the symbol of the Cold War.
It was the first great crisis of the Cold War.
- Will Germany be reunified?
Together, of course, they would form
an economic and political power.
But would a giant German state once again dominate Europe?
The memories are very real, of course.
- Many Europeans were very wary of reuniting Germany.
They liked the idea that there were two Germanys
and that Germany was therefore weaker.
- When the European leadership saw the United States
favoring a united Germany,
they were extremely uneasy and resisted it.
All the same, President Bush and Secretary Baker
thought this was essential and it was right.
- We have entered a new era in world affairs,
a moment when the actions we take
can shape this new world for years to come.
- George Bush's goal was to get Germany to unify within NATO.
- The White House, while repeating the basic principle
of German membership of NATO is simply not negotiable,
does appear to be putting a major effort
into addressing Soviet fears
and finding a formula which Mr. Gorbachev can accept.
- George Bush understood that he had a partner
in shaping the post-Cold War world,
and that partner was Mikhail Gorbachev.
But Gorbachev wanted to be neutral.
Bush always wanted a unified Germany,
and in a very disciplined manner,
moved Gorbachev towards that position.
- In a major concession,
Gorbachev agreed to the western position
that a unified Germany is free to join NATO.
- Once you solved the German problem,
you removed the basic source of tension
between the two superpowers in the Cold War.
- This is the big photo opportunity,
the important picture that President Bush
came all this way to get.
At this moment,
Gorbachev chooses to give President Bush his present.
- [laughing]
- The present was a Soviet cartoonist's depiction
of the two presidents as boxers, having just knocked out
the Cold War with the world as referee.
- George Bush and Brent Scowcroft,
who was his National Security Advisor, liked to fish together.
And one summer they were fishing and they were thinking about
what kind of world would emerge
after all the dominoes had fallen.
It's very rare that the world is so fluid and flexible
that world leaders can think this way,
talking about what the world should be, what it could be.
What they imagined was the world that didn't happen
after World War II,
the world of collective security,
of big powers sharing responsibility
for preventing war.
They used the term "New World Order".
How do you achieve it?
[dramatic music]
- Today, in a 45-minute state of the nation speech,
President F.W. De Klerk transformed 30 years
of South African politics.
He promised that its most famous leader, Nelson Mandela,
would soon be free.
- Nelson Mandela is probably
the best known political prisoner in the world.
He's been in prison for decades because of his actions
in leading the armed struggle against Apartheid
in South Africa.
- There's Mr. Mandela, Mr. Nelson Mandela,
a free man taking his first steps into a new South Africa.
- While the world is changing in Europe,
the Apartheid government of South Africa sees
the writing on the wall.
South Africa, which has been a pariah state,
won't be able to continue in the post-Cold War world.
- When he's released from prison, then, it does become
a global moment that signifies one of the earliest indications
that the 1990s is going to be a very different sort of decade.
[crowd chanting]
I greet you all...
in the name of peace...
democracy and freedom for all!
- He becomes a moral beacon around the world
because of the way he handled himself.
So you had this world, this moment in the early '90s
when the peacemakers were in charge.
The stars aligned.
- There has been a dangerous, late-breaking development
in the Persian Gulf.
U.S. intelligence sources confirmed that within
the past few hours, more than a hundred thousand Iraqi troops
have massed along that country's border with Kuwait.
- Saddam Hussein sends a substantial fleet of tanks
and other mechanized forces to the Kuwaiti border.
It's shocking in Washington and in other western capitols.
- Saddam had a million man army, and if he invades Kuwait,
he could very quickly lurch into Saudi Arabia,
and the Saudis would not have been able to resist.
All the oil is on the eastern side of the country,
right there on the border with Iraq.
[man speaking foreign language]
- Iraq invaded and took over its tiny neighbor Kuwait today.
The government of dictator Saddam Hussein
claimed it went in at the invitation of revolutionaries
who had overthrown the Kuwaiti government.
No western authority accepted that story.
- Many Americans...
[translator speaking foreign language]
Are concerned that there may be a war.
- [speaking native language]
translator: What is required of Mr. Bush
to say to the Americans, that he doesn't want war.
- If you had been in a room with Saddam Hussein
and interviewed him for, I think, an hour and 15 minutes,
and then spent another hour and a half with him
after the interview,
I think you would have reached the same conclusion.
No question Saddam Hussein was a stone cold killer.
- This is the opening of the post-Cold War era of history.
If aggression was allowed to stand,
nobody thought it would end there.
- President Bush came of age throughout all those decades
in which there were world wars,
in which there was the West against the Soviets.
He'd been CIA director, ambassador--
he'd been everything, right?
So he really understood the world and understood the stakes.
But for whatever reason, when Iraq invaded Kuwait,
Saddam Hussein honestly thought that nobody would care
and almost got away with it.
- The first Saturday of the crisis
I got a call on the phone
from Brent Scowcroft, my boss, and he said,
"The President's helicoptering back from Camp David.
"I can't meet him, you have to meet him.
"You have to brief him on the situation.
"There's probably going to be a lot of press there.
I gotta go." [laughing]
The president lands, and I'm out there with my piece of paper...
and... [laughs] He just took the paper,
goes over to the microphone, and that's when he just said...
- This will not stand.
This will not stand, this aggression against Kuwait.
I've got to go.
I have to go to work. [reporters shouting questions]
- It was an unusual sound from him,
but he was firm because he really meant it.
Bush had a moral code.
I think he got it from his prep school,
he got it from his mother,
and Saddam Hussein didn't do the honorable thing--
he invaded another country.
- From the day the invasion took place, Secretary Baker
led the effort to build a global coalition.
They had two expeditions overseas in which
they were going around from capitol to capitol,
looking for support.
- The United Nations Security Council has authorized
the use of force against Iraq.
- Fourteen votes in favor,
none against, none abstentions.
The draft resolution has been adopted.
- Getting that massive alliance together
truly goes down in history
as one of the greatest accomplishments, I think,
of any president, to be able to get that many people
on your side, believing in the same thing,
and ready to do the same thing.
- What George Bush managed to do in Iraq with that coalition,
in effect, was to create the beginnings
of this new world order, I mean, who could've imagined
the coalition would include the likes of
the Soviet Union, China, and then, of course,
the Middle Eastern states as well,
standing up to one of their own.
- Hundreds of demonstrators gathered
to protest the inevitable.
All but one, that is.
- Bomb Iraq! Bomb Iraq!
- Whenever America goes to war,
there's going to be protests in the streets.
[crowd chanting]
But you needed congressional support,
or you wouldn't have popular support.
- The world looks to the president.
He can play a historic role in leading us
to solve this crisis in a non-violent way.
- Make no mistake about it--
our vital interests are at stake.
- Bush knew that you had to let that process go forward.
You couldn't just declare war and do it.
- The hope of peace remains in my heart
and the hearts of us all.
But this debate is now about war.
- Massive air power in a matter of days
can bring this villain to his knees!
- Let us stop beating the drums of war.
Let us oppose this march to violence.
- Nowhere is it ordained that the New World Order
must begin with a new World War.
- They had a great national debate,
and the argument for going to war prevailed.
- President Bush said the action by Congress now shows
Saddam Hussein that the United States government
is serious and united in its demand
that Iraq withdraw from Kuwait or face the consequences.
- We've now closed ranks behind a clear signal
of our determination and our resolve to implement
the United Nation's resolutions.
- It is no longer a question of if war starts, but how and when.
[dramatic music]
- Good evening, the headlines at six o'clock.
More than a million troops are tonight facing each other
in the Saudi desert, preparing for war.
♪ ♪
- Saddam Hussein warned the United States today
that American troops would, quote,
"Swim in their own blood," if they go to war with Iraq.
- Saddam Hussein started this cruel war against Kuwait.
Tonight the battle has been joined.
♪ ♪
- About 50 minutes ago,
American aircraft suddenly descended on Iraq
and occupied Kuwait.
The war in the Persian Gulf has begun.
[explosions]
- Secretary Weinberger, you were credited
with the military build-up which has come to a lot of criticism.
We have to go to Baghdad, Secretary.
Something is happening outside.
The skies over Baghdad have been illuminated.
We're seeing bright flashes going off all over the sky.
We're getting starbursts in the black sky.
- The significance in journalism terms was it was the first time
in which you had extensive live coverage of the war.
[explosions]
- Our office was on the ninth floor of the Al Rasheed Hotel.
We were one of the tallest buildings in Baghdad,
so we knew that whatever was going to happen,
we would be able to see the drama.
- The military offensive overnight has been described
as the largest, the strongest air attack in history.
Just one comment.
Clearly I've never been there, but this feels like
we're in the center of hell.
Saddam Hussein, in an address to the Iraqi people
and the Arab nations said,
"The mother of all wars has started."
We told you earlier in the week
that the Information Ministry had received
its own satellite dish and prior to that
the Foreign Ministry had its.
We've gotta run, somebody's knocking on the door.
John and I are gonna hide. Peter, here.
We opened the door and there were several
armed Iraqi security people.
And one of them could speak sort of broken English, he said,
"What are you doing here? You should be in the bunker."
I just fell to my knees and I said, "I won't go.
I don't care about the danger."
And they looked at me sort of disgustedly and said,
"Huh," and left.
So I got up, closed the door,
my colleagues emerged from hiding,
and we continued coverage for the next 12 hours.
- What is at stake is more than one small country.
It is a big idea, a new world order,
where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause
to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind--
peace and security,
freedom and the rule of law.
- George Bush was one of the youngest pilots
in the U.S. Navy during the second World War.
He's shot down, survives this heroically, really.
And that experience is so searing for Bush,
the experience of being involved in a global war
between clear good and clear evil.
And so there is a realization that if you can use
overwhelming air power, you're gonna be able to
attrit not only Iraqi military forces,
but you're going to be able to eviscerate Iraq
as a functioning 20th century nation.
- You had 40-plus days of air war.
[explosions]
And ultimately we began to run low on targets.
- President Bush praises Israel's continued restraint
in the face of last night's attack by Iraq
when seven Scud missiles landed on Israel.
- Saddam Hussein tried his damnedest to provoke Israel
into entering this armed conflict,
including sending Scud missiles into Tel Aviv.
- The remains of a house in Tel Aviv are from
this morning's Scud missile attacks.
Eight missiles landed altogether in the Haifa
and Tel Aviv central area.
There was no warning of them.
- It's a very clever ploy by Saddam
to split apart the coalition,
and it took all of the diplomatic wherewithal
of the president to keep Israel out of the war.
- The coalition will give Saddam Hussein
until noon Saturday.
- If he doesn't begin moving his forces, the allied coalition
is on the verge of invading Kuwait and Iraq by land.
- We tried to give him some good advice a few months ago,
we told him, move it or lose it.
They wouldn't move it, now they will lose it.
- Colin Powell, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,
believed in exerting maximum power on the ground,
so that you wouldn't be fighting a prolonged war,
that this would be quick, decisive.
It became known as the Powell Doctrine.
- The ground war started this morning as the Americans
and their allies attacked with massive firepower
that shook the earth.
- We're about 15 1/2 hours into a ground war
that from all of the sketchy reports we're receiving
is going well.
- So far the offensive is progressing
with dramatic success.
The troops are doing a great job.
But the war is not over yet.
- What are your impressions of Saddam Hussein
as a military strategist?
- [laughs] [laughter]
- Stormin' Norman was out of central casting.
- He is neither a strategist,
nor is he schooled in the operational art,
nor is he a tactician, nor is he a general,
nor is he a soldier.
Other than that, he's a great military man,
I want you to know that. [laughter]
- Big and burly and confident.
When he came in that briefing room, your chest swelled.
It was American military might on parade.
- Schwarzkopf's presence was important.
It was a huge factor on American support for the war.
- The war in the Gulf is virtually over.
Tonight, what may be the final battle of the Gulf War.
- Headlines in Baghdad newspapers screamed,
"Fight Them!" But pictures from southern Kuwait
told a different story.
- The Iraqi army began to emerge from their holes
in the desert to give up.
- Kneel down.
- We knocked out Saddam in a hundred hours.
It was a rout.
- This is sand from the liberated beaches of Kuwait.
- That was a massive success and it showed the world
a huge lesson that this kind of aggression would not stand.
The problem was that they didn't go all the way to Baghdad.
- But that would have been a much bigger military operation,
because what many of the allies had signed on to
was only to liberate Kuwait.
The United States allowed Saddam Hussein to stay in power.
- The message flashed in New York City's Times Square
said it all, "The war in the Gulf has ended."
[cheering]
- Saddam Hussein had bigger-than-life ambitions,
and he was willing to do whatever it took
to stay in power, to exert himself,
to make Iraq the geo-strategic center of the middle east,
and he failed at all of them.
[shouting in native language]
[horns honking]
[dramatic music]
- Demonstrators protesting the Communist Party
marched to the walls of the Kremlin.
All of this keeps the pressure on Gorbachev,
who has promised to accelerate the pace of his reforms.
These people want him to deliver on that promise now.
- Many of the protestors carried the flag
of pre-revolutionary Russia.
- Gorbachev's reforms weren't working.
- Prices for food and energy in Russia will go up
several hundred percent next week.
- Life was becoming harder,
consumer goods harder to find,
food even short at times.
The economic system was breaking down.
- In a country accustomed to shortages,
people are saying they've never had it so bad.
- Hardliners did not like the tone of reforms
introduced by Gorbachev.
- Gorbachev's reforms were meant to restore
and refresh Communism and save the Soviet Union
and actually they had the exact opposite effect.
- You couldn't reform this economic system,
you had to throw it out.
Gorbachev wasn't able or willing to do that.
So, it was a matter of time before the old establishment
were going to try to get rid of him.
- Mr. Gorbachev's message,
calling for national unity,
has fallen on deaf ears.
- It's difficult for outsiders to capture the maelstrom
that Gorbachev was in.
I remember being with him
when I was traveling with President Bush.
He was depleted by just
what he had had to deal with on every level.
- It was a parade that was intended to celebrate
a united and successful Soviet military machine.
But this day comes as the army is losing its role abroad
and its prestige at home,
and tending to blame Mr. Gorbachev.
- I had a call from the mayor of Moscow,
and while we talked about local politics,
he wrote on a sheet of paper that a coup
was being organized against Gorbachev,
and I told Gorbachev that we have information
that President Bush wanted him to know.
A coup is being organized
and could happen at almost any time.
First he sort of laughed and said,
"President Bush has said that we're friends--
"now he's proved it.
"You did exactly what you should do, but don't worry.
It's not gonna happen."
[upbeat music]
- It was announced on television that Gorbachev was ill
and therefore a committee would take charge until he recovered.
- A column of tanks is reported to be heading towards
the Russian parliament in Moscow where thousands of people
have gathered in defiance of the new Soviet government.
[glass shatters]
- Gorbachev's whereabouts tonight are unknown,
there are some thoughts he's under house arrest.
He's certainly unable to act as he wants to.
- Gorbachev every year liked to holiday on the Black Sea
and his aides showed up at his dacha.
They cut off communications and took away his nuclear codes.
- The KGB chief, the military commander,
the Minister of the Interior and the Prime Minister
joined forces to mount the coup.
translator: Nothing threatens Mr. Gorbachev.
He's in a safe place,
accept that he needs some time to feel better.
- Eduard Shevardnadze warned today
that the right wing coup would have tragic consequences.
translator: It is the beginning of civil war.
- There are scenes of extraordinary drama here
in Moscow tonight.
Scenes of destruction, of fire,
even of blood on the streets.
Four people died, shot or crushed by armored vehicles.
- Amid speculation that Mr. Gorbachev is now being held
in Moscow, at least 50,000 people gathered
at the Russian parliament building.
- Gorbachev wasn't that popular by that point,
but these people were even less popular than Gorbachev.
If they had mounted a coup against Gorbachev in 1989,
or early 1990, he might have fallen and the new Soviet Union
would have been quite different.
But there were already new, legitimate figures
that the Russian people were supporting
and were expecting a lot from.
[chanting in native language]
- Around 50,000 supporters of Boris Yeltsin gathered
to chant their support for the man who's now carrying
the battered banner of liberal reform.
- Boris Yeltsin had been popularly elected
as President of the Russian Federation.
He was emerging as an alternative power
to the Communist party leaders.
- Let me put on my glasses here for a moment and read you
a piece of wire copy that has just come across on Reuter's.
"Russian President Boris Yeltsin ordered all army and KGB units
"involved in the overthrow of Mikhail Gorbachev to stand down
and said he was assuming control on the territory of Russia."
Clearly there is a major confrontation shaping up
in the Russian republic.
- The president's day began
with a succession of meetings and phone calls.
Among his conversations had been one with Boris Yeltsin,
whose status in the White House has risen suddenly to that
of the potential savior of Soviet democracy.
- When the tanks came in, the commander had called Yeltsin
and said, "I'm supposed to attack you but I will not,
I will protect you."
And that's when he stood up on the tank
and indicated to the coup leaders,
"These guys are with me and not with you."
- "It is a coup by criminals," said Yeltsin.
- Because of the liberalization
that Gorbachev had brought about,
the Communist party and the military could no longer
move against the Russian people,
and that was world-shaking.
- Tonight Moscow's skyline was ablaze with celebration--
relief as the symbols of conflict were removed.
- Gorbachev comes back to Moscow,
but the Soviet institutions,
the totalitarian system of government
that had led this country for 70 years,
collapsed virtually overnight,
and that was an amazing thing to see.
- When Gorbachev saw evidence that his vision
of a free Leninist state wasn't going to come to pass,
rather than cracking down so he could stay in the Kremlin,
he let it happen.
That takes a political courage
that is so unusual in world history.
- You are looking at the Russian flag flying tonight
over the Kremlin.
Just before the Kremlin cameras clicked on today,
Mikhail Gorbachev said to himself, quote,
"When you have to go, you have to go."
He then officially resigned as President of the Soviet Union
and turned over the nuclear codes to the new top man,
Russia's Boris Yeltsin.
translator: Society has been granted its freedom,
has been politically and spiritually unchained,
and that's our biggest achievement.
- There's this saying about a revolution devouring
its own children.
In Russia's case, it devoured its own father,
Gorbachev.
translator: I wish you all all the best.
[dramatic music]
- There are times when you have to wonder why anyone
in his or her right mind would want to be
President of the United States.
Exhibit A, George Bush.
- It's one of the tragedies of the American system
that presidents feel they need to be re-elected
to prove their legacy.
That the first election wasn't a fluke.
- For Republicans, what a difference a year makes.
365 days ago, President Bush's popularity
was at an all-time high.
- After the Gulf War, people believed
we would have four more years,
but the economy was in a recession
and while everyone approved of how he handled the war,
there were concerns about how he handled the economy.
- In Little Rock, Arkansas,
Governor Bill Clinton makes it official.
- Clinton said President Bush is out of touch
with rank and file Americans because he favors the rich
at the expense of the middle class.
- I believe that together we can make America great again.
- Bill Clinton is very formidable,
and he proves early on to understand
the major vulnerability of George H.W. Bush,
and that's the economy.
- And that is why today I proudly announce my candidacy
for President of the United States of America.
- Americans compete for fewer jobs,
and it's a sure bet unemployment
will be growing again by election day.
- 83,000 jobs gone.
- Another 140,000 Americans became unemployed.
- I know the pain up here,
I've heard about the lost homes and the shattered lives.
We had won the Cold War, and I thought
instead of putting all these countries abroad first,
it was time that we started looking out for our own country
and our own people.
All of these things led me to believe that
if nobody's going to do it, I think I might.
As we were yesterday, and we are tomorrow.
And so, I am declaring my candidacy for
the Republication nomination for President of the United States.
[cheering and whistling]
- Pat Buchanan is a super-smart, super-ideological guy
who worked in the Nixon administration
and was pushing Nixon to the right.
- America first! Pat in '92!
- Pat Buchanan becomes George Bush's worst nightmare.
- Hi, how you doing?
- He starts talking to the American people
who are feeling a little unsure
as the Reagan prosperity engine sputters.
- All those who are with us can come on in!
While George Bush was an excellent
foreign policy president,
he was not a good politician.
- No, yeah, to get to that.
- "Let me quote the words of one Arab leader,
Saddam Hussein, himself."
- And then I pick this up or take it out of my pocket?
- That's what I want to find...
if you take it out of your pocket
then you got to have your coat open, to do that?
- George Bush was a little bit awkward.
It was like he was pretending to be a politician.
He did not look forward to the '92 election.
- To deflect public criticism of his foreign travels,
the President said his trip to Japan
was about jobs, jobs, jobs.
The result was hardly what his image makers hoped for.
- The lone camera in the dining room was locked in
on the head table when President Bush
was overcome by nausea and fell forward.
It appears he lost consciousness as he toppled over
onto his host, Prime Minister Miyazawa.
- This man, who had overseen the soft landing
of the Cold War, who had been Commander-in-Chief
for a brilliant victory against Iraq,
would be viewed as a weak leader.
He vomited into the lap of the Japanese Prime Minister,
and it was caught on tape.
The timing, the optics,
it couldn't have been worse, and he knew it.
The primaries were about to begin.
- When I get the flu, I do it in a very dramatic--
[crowd laughs]
Dramatic way, but, uh...
It was so embarrassing.
- This is a '92 vote special report from ABC News.
- Good evening, I'm Peter Jennings,
a brief interruption for an update
on the New Hampshire presidential primary.
Tonight the voters in New Hampshire very concerned
with the state of the economy, their own particularly,
have given President Bush and unpleasant surprise.
Although NBC News has projected a victory for the President,
conservative commentator Patrick Buchanan
is likely to get more than 40% of the vote.
- Pat Buchanan is able to get that critical mass of people
with his media skills, with his charisma,
to really create a big rift in the Republican Party.
- H. Ross Perot, the Texas billionaire with lots of ideas.
By the way, is there any scenario
in which you would run for president?
- Number one, I will not run
as either a Democrat or a Republican
'cause I will not sell out to anybody
but to the American people.
And I will sell out to them.
- Ross Perot went on Larry King and announced
he was going to run for president as an independent.
- I don't want any money from anybody but you.
- I didn't win the nomination.
But I think Ross Perot saw what we did,
saw the vulnerability of Bush,
and made his decision right then to go.
- Well, there's one thing for sure,
Ross Perot's unorthodox way of campaigning
has struck a chord with many voters.
- He bought a half-hour on NBC to talk about
his plan for curing what ails the economy.
- I thought it would be a good idea to take
the most important problem first--
that problem is our economy and jobs.
- Out of nowhere comes Ross Perot,
this straight talkin' billionaire
who looks a little goofy for the age of television,
but because he has that old southern charm,
that old Texas twang,
he's able to evoke an old fashioned America
that Pat Buchanan's also evoking that George Bush
is not able to evoke effectively,
and Ross Perot starts running against George H.W. Bush
as an ineffective steward of the Reagan revolution.
- Let me just go on record one time tonight.
We can win! [crowd cheering]
- The Ross Perot phenomenon reached new heights.
In California it was Perot 38%, Bush 32%, Clinton 20%.
- Ross Perot was making inroads.
The White House was just furious and scared.
If he continued to attract Republican voters,
then Bush was going to lose.
[dramatic music]
[phone ringing]
- In a world where we're just
one unknown dictator away
from the next major crisis...
[phone ringing]
Who do you most trust
to be sitting in this chair?
[phone ringing]
- American presidents tend to love foreign policy
because they don't have to deal with the Congress often,
they don't have to deal with other people--
they can just sort of move and act.
But the truth is that most American elections
are determined by domestic politics,
not so much by your foreign achievements.
And so George H.W. Bush,
even after this amazing victory
in the Persian Gulf, runs into storms.
- Campaign '92. - Good evening.
President George Bush, Governor Bill Clinton
and independent candidate for president, Ross Perot,
are about to make their second joint appearance
of the campaign.
- Bill Clinton is someone who understood that the best way
to learn about the problems of his constituents
was to sit there and talk to them.
Bill Clinton loved the Town Hall format.
- You know people who've lost their jobs?
And lost their homes? - Well, yeah. Uh-huh.
- In my state, when people lose their jobs,
there's a good chance I'll know 'em by their names.
- George H.W. Bush didn't have that personal touch.
- It has a lot to do with interest rates, it has--
- She's saying you, personally.
- You, on a personal basis, how has it affected you?
- This whole experience of the Town Hall
is clearly excruciating for George Bush.
He really likes people, but he's not particularly good at it.
- If the question you're asking--maybe I get it wrong--
are you suggesting that if somebody has means
that the national debt doesn't affect them?
- Well, what I'm saying-- - I'm not sure I get it.
Help me with the question and I'll try to answer it.
- TV was completely dominating American politics,
and George Bush just didn't benefit from that.
- What will you do as president to open foreign markets
to fair competition from American business?
- We have got to stop sending jobs overseas.
- One of Ross Perot's big arguments during the debates
is that the NAFTA agreement,
which President Bush supports and is trying to push,
is gonna cost American jobs.
- If you can move your factories south of the border
and you don't care about anything but making money,
there will be a giant sucking sound going south.
- This is an argument that in the middle of the recession
resonates with a lot of voters.
- We have a question right here.
- And then, when he's being asked a question,
President Bush looks at his watch.
It symbolizes every bad image people had.
He didn't care, he wasn't very interested.
- At the second debate, the president left
many of his supporters shaking their heads.
The President kept looking at his watch.
Campaign aides said he was merely concerned
that his opponents were getting too much time,
but it made him look impatient and disinterested.
- That is the George Bush of 1992,
completely out of step with the direction
that American culture is taking.
- Well, Democrat Bill Clinton,
the once obscure governor of a small southern state,
has racked up the electoral votes needed
to win the presidency of the United States.
In doing so, he defeated a GOP incumbent
once believed unbeatable.
- When Bush loses the 1992 election,
it is certainly a generational shift.
Clinton really does trounce Bush in a way
that is pretty significant and jarring for a sitting president,
to be defeated in that way.
- We love you, Bill! - My fellow Americans...
[cheers and applause]
- George Bush was a proud guy and he was human,
and when he lost in 1992, he wept.
- George Bush is only the fourth elected president
this century to be rejected by the people
and denied a second term.
- He wrote in his diary that he was crushed,
that he had been humiliated.
After all he'd done for his country,
and after all the service that he had rendered
in war and peace, he was being told to go home.
That was a painful message.
- Hey, listen, we gotta get going.
Thank you.
The people have spoken,
and we respect the majesty of the democratic system.
I just called Governor Clinton over in Little Rock
and offered my congratulations.
- George Bush took the loss to Bill Clinton very hard.
Bill Clinton was his son's age.
- Thank you so much.
Thank you.
- People are sure that George Bush's presidency
will be the overlooked moment
between the charisma of Ronald Reagan
and the charisma of Bill Clinton.
As we look back on the George H.W. Bush presidency,
we see his stock going up.
We see that he managed the end of the Cold War.
He simply let the Soviet Union go off into the dustbin
of history and America emerged as the great power of the 1990s.
- He won the world, but he lost his own country,
and the reason was, in no small degree, economics.
In American politics, most people,
in the end, vote their pocketbooks.
[somber music]
- I believe that history will deal
extraordinarily kindly with President Bush,
the way he brought about Germany's unification and NATO,
the way he dealt with Iraqi aggression,
but doing it in a way that brought
the international community together.
- People often think that history is scripted.
But there are moments in history
when even the most powerful people
don't really know what's going to come next,
and this was that time in world history.
The world owes George Bush such a debt of gratitude
for leading us through this.
- If it's true that George Bush prizes loyalty above all,
then this must have been one of the most gratifying sights
of his political life.
[cheers and applause]
Devoted employees, party faithful, old friends
and family all gathered in a sort of communal effort
to put the bruising campaign and humiliating loss
behind them.
- We will support the new president
and give him every chance to lead this country
into greater heights.
I-- [cheers and applause]
I am very grateful to all of you.
It's been a wonderful four years,
and I think we've really contributed something
to the country, and maybe history will record it that way.
Thank you all very, very much.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
[gentle music]
♪ ♪