Since I have noted the relevant history many times over recent years, I will make you read my version before diving into the current reference of it in today’s news. I trace my telling back to at least 2021:
For those unfamiliar, that was a rather average 8-month recession that lasted from July 1990 to March 1991. (Note that the end of it was more than 18 months before the 1992 presidential election.) Interestingly, the official outlet for such things (i.e. the National Bureau of Economic Research) did not announce the end of that recession until December 22, 1992. (Note that the announcement came several weeks after the 1992 presidential election.) If you were politically aware of things back then, you will remember the Clinton Campaign, aided by the reliably Leftist media including the trusted nightly news anchors of the day and their near monopoly on dictating the narrative, took full advantage of this to hammer home the mantra “THE WORST ECONOMY IN 50 YEARS” for many, many months. Also, for the historically ill-informed out there, that reference timeframe meant something for a key voting demographic that tended to get more conservative at their age. You do the math.
Admittedly, I was in my early twenties and finishing up my formal education in central Iowa at the time so I was likely somewhat isolated but…I remember the rhetoric and the headlines feeling very disconnected from reality. Especially since I had at least vague memories of the late 70’s and early 80’s as being much worse, at least in the rural areas and economies to which I was exposed. So, even to this newcomer to political awareness, it was all obvious political theater. But in those days of a much more limited media and cable news presence, the tautological treatment of this story line with so much seriousness became the national narrative.
There were a lot of dynamics in play over that 18 months leading up to the election but, make no mistake about it: the beast took down George H. W. Bush and the pervasive messaging behind “THE WORST ECONOMY IN 50 YEARS” played a major part. – The Worst Economy in Eighty Years
With that out on the table, we will turn to today’s headlines:
Is Trump Getting The George H.W. Bush Treatment On The Economy?
Republican incumbent President George H.W. Bush lost the 1992 election to the Arkansas governor who ran on the slogan “It’s the Economy, Stupid.” Americans voted for change after being told over and over by the legacy media that the economy was dragging. But it wasn’t. It had recovered from a downturn, yet the media continued to shop the lie, carrying Bill Clinton to the presidency. …
Clinton’s campaign was centered on his claim that the economy leading up to the 1992 election was the worst “in 50 years.” It was true that Bush’s term had a rough patch that began in July 1990. But “the recession ended in March 1991,” according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, and “an expansion began at that time.”
Read that again. March 1991. Not March 1992. Nor March 1993.
A 1996 paper published in the American Journal of Political Science found that 90% of the stories about the economy were negative and that “the network’s portrayal of the economy got worse as the economy improved.”
I will restrain myself from quoting the whole thing here…well worth the time to go read it though. The key for those manipulating current economic reporting and those leveraging those manipulations for their political benefit is just as true today: “…the economy doesn’t have to be in decline to impact political races. All that’s needed is the perception that we’re headed downhill toward a cliff.“
Will “We the People” fall for it again? Well, nine months ago I seemed rather confident:
Of course, many like to point to the existence of third-party candidate Ross Perot for the electoral outcome but, I hate to bust their bubble, it is doubtful that the Perot campaign would have had enough energy to survive without being fed by this same pseudo-recession BS and the fully anti-Bush media of 1992 (i.e., ‘fake news’ in its very infancy).
As for a much-weakened media attempting the same play again in 2026 against a well-ruggedized fighter of a caliber that would likely amaze the old-pro Lee Atwater (see Bush Campaign 1988)…I say: Bring it on.
Even the greatly weakened state media complex of today is a powerful force in the heads of many key voting blocs so…while still cautiously confident…I would sure like to see a flurry of solid punches from our fighter over the next five-plus weeks to bring this mid-term election home.
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Reference Links:
The Fake Recession Gambit of 1991…Back in the Playbook for 2026?
