The Last Cold War Election

Abstract

When President Bush and Congress were slow to react to America's straitened circumstances, public frustration with politics intensified, fueling an incipient crisis in the central institution of American democracy?the two-party system. The fervor for Ross Perot was just one sign ofthat discontent. Most political observers ascribed public disaffection to dissat isfaction with the presidential candidates of both major par ties. But those two men were, by the standards of American politics, among the most capable of their peers and predeces sors. More to the point, no one stands more clearly at the center of gravity of the Republican and Democratic parties than do George Bush and Bill Clinton. Their leadership is more than titular; they embody their parties. And that was the heart of the problem: what the parties stood for in the minds of many Americans over the past half century of Cold War and what they still stand for in 1992. Throughout the Cold War the Republican Party's reason for existence was anticommunism. Republicans could be counted on to shield America from the Red Menace, at home and