How did the 1992 election create the blueprint for modern MAGA politics?

Was David Duke actually the secret architect of the Republican Party’s future?

Trace the origins of Trumpism back to 1992 in When the Clock Broke. Discover how David Duke, Pat Buchanan, and Ross Perot shattered the GOP establishment and paved the way for authoritarian populism. Connect the dots between the past and present—read the full summary to understand how the political chaos of the early 90s is still shaping your world today.

Genres

History, Politics, Society, Culture

Introduction: See how the roots of Trumpism can be traced to the 1992 US presidential election.

When the Clock Broke (2024) delivers a fascinating look into the years leading up to the 1992 Presidential Election, between Bill Clinton, Ross Perot, and the incumbent George H.W. Bush. It reveals how a relatively small movement took root and began to transform the Republican Party into a more populist and authoritarian version of conservatism. It also shows why this approach appeals to the disaffected groups in America.

John Ganz, When the Clock Broke, Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s. In the waning days of George H. W. Bush’s presidency, a storm was brewing. The economy was in the tank, unemployment was reaching distressing levels, and the American people were growing increasingly disillusioned with their leadership. Into this void emerged a new kind of conservative movement.

It brought together extreme right-wingers and libertarians alike, all of whom wanted to completely change the game. At a meeting of these minds, the voice of libertarian leader Murray Rothbard captured the movement’s dark spirit. He told the crowd that the time to try and turn back the clock was over. It was now time to break the clock, to break the Social Democrats, to break the New Deal and the very idea of the Great Society.

A movement was afoot to basically break the Republican Party. It started in 1992, and while they didn’t win the election, they planted the seeds that would eventually turn the party away from Reagan and Bush-era policies and toward the party of Donald Trump. This is how it all went down.

Something lurks in the Louisiana swamps

Something Lurks in the Louisiana Swamps In the early 1990s, David Duke, a former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard and neo-Nazi, unexpectedly emerged as a significant political figure in Louisiana. Duke’s victory in the 1989 primary for Louisiana’s 81st Legislative District captured national attention. Despite prominent Republicans backing his opponent, Duke won the runoff election, securing a seat in the state legislature. Louisiana’s turbulent history made it fertile ground for Duke’s rise.

The state’s complex mix of racial, religious, and economic tensions, along with the lingering influence of populist authoritarian figures like Huey P. Long, created a volatile political landscape that Duke exploited. His message of racial resentment resonated with white residents frustrated by economic decline and demographic changes. In 1991, Duke ran for the Louisiana governorship, facing Edwin Edwards, a seasoned but controversial politician with a history of corruption. Though Edwards ultimately won, Duke got 55% of the white vote, a fact that certainly didn’t go unnoticed. Duke’s rise signaled a shift in American politics, reflecting the disillusionment of a wounded white middle class who saw extremist ideologies as solutions to their grievances. This period of economic recession, racial tension, and loss of faith in political institutions created an environment where messages like Duke’s could thrive.

All of this brought about internal conflicts within the Republican Party. During the 1990 debate over the Civil Rights Act of 1990, Democratic senators were publicly questioning whether the party was more aligned with the values of Abraham Lincoln or of David Duke. Duke, ever the opportunist, claimed credit when President Bush vetoed the Civil Rights Act, claiming his influence was a significant factor. Duke even visited the offices of the conservative newspaper, The Washington Times, to revel in his supposed impact. One of the people he met that day was the influential Samuel T. Francis, who worked for the paper’s editorial division. Francis believed that Duke’s appeal was a sign of things to come for the Republican Party, that the old conservative messages were losing their grip on voters, and something new and more radical was taking hold.

Francis’ worldview was increasingly shaped by a disdain for the elite and a belief that the middle American radicals, or MARs, white, lower middle class citizens, were the true backbone of the nation. These MARs, in Francis’ view, were fed up with being patronized by the rich and burdened by government policies favoring minorities. He saw them as the key to a new revolutionary political force that could overthrow the corrupt elites and restore traditional American values. So as the 1990s dawned, the neoconservatives, like George H.W. Bush, who valued democracy and globalism, were being rejected by a new faction who called themselves the paleoconservatives. Paleoconservatives like Sam Francis were not only opposed to policy decisions, they fundamentally rejected the post-war liberal order that they believed had corrupted American society.

A Duke without the baggage

A Duke Without the Baggage Leading up to the 1992 election, George H.W. Bush was not in a good place. The economy was in a slump, and despite Bush’s attempts to downplay or prematurely declare an end to the recession, public sentiment told a different tale. His ratings plummeted from a Gulf War high of 89% to below 50%, reflecting widespread dissatisfaction with his handling of the economy. The roots of America’s financial troubles lay in the deregulation of the savings and loan industry during the Reagan era.

As banks began to fail in large numbers, unemployment was also on the rise, due in part to the defense industry cutbacks following the end of the Cold War and increasing automation in the industrial sector. As these economic woes intensified, Bush’s popularity continued to decline, opening the door for challengers within his own party. At the top of the challenger list was Pat Buchanan. Buchanan was an experienced political operator and speechwriter whose credits went back to the Nixon administration. When he announced his candidacy for the Republican nomination, he positioned himself as a nationalist alternative to Bush. Buchanan immediately tapped into the growing anger and dissatisfaction among the Mars that Sam Francis had written about, and they responded enthusiastically.

Buchanan’s campaign skillfully harnessed the media, showcasing his ability to connect with ordinary Americans. His rhetoric was sharp and belligerent as he targeted the elites and advocated for a new nationalism that put America first. Buchanan was seen by many as being Duke, but without all the KKK and neo-Nazi baggage. His campaign won over disaffected conservatives and libertarians alike, uniting them under a banner of right-wing populism that rejected the cautious establishment politics of the past. Few expected conservatives and libertarians to get along, but with Buchanan at the podium, they did just that, each responding to a call for a radical departure from the status quo. This new wave of conservatism was also more confrontational, driven by anger and a sense of betrayal.

It wasn’t just about limiting the role of government. It was about seizing control of it to fight back against perceived threats to American values and identity. As the 1992 election approached, Buchanan’s message was at the forefront of a turning point in American politics. The seeds of populist anger were being sown, setting the stage for the conflicts and divisions that would come to define the political landscape in the years ahead.

Perot on the radio

Rush Limbaugh, a name synonymous with conservative talk radio, didn’t start off with the confidence he later exuded on the airwaves. Born in 1951 in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, Limbaugh’s early years were marked by shyness and insecurity, particularly around girls. Limbaugh found a transformative power behind the microphone, where he became a different, more assertive version of himself. After being fired from several radio stations in the 1970s, Limbaugh found stability in the mid-80s with a broadcasting gig in Sacramento, California.

It was here that his vision for the Republican Party began to take shape. Unlike the stable, middle-class GOP of his father, Limbaugh’s version was fueled by anger and alienation, reflecting his own experiences of feeling left out. His show resonated with a growing audience of listeners who felt similarly disillusioned. The 1980s and 90s saw a rise in loneliness and isolation across America, often linked to the decline of traditional values. Talk radio emerged as a revolt against mainstream media and a powerful outlet for expressing this discontent, giving a voice to millions who felt alienated and angry. The medium reshaped the American political and media landscape, with figures like the third-party presidential candidate Ross Perot using it to tap into that same populist anger.

Despite his disdain for the modern image-driven culture, Perot was a master of public relations, cultivating a larger-than-life persona through popular platforms like the Larry King live show. He was often compared to American folk heroes, like Davy Crockett. In his unaffected Southern drawl, he even referred to himself as P.T. Barnum without the elephants. Perot’s rise to the national stage was a carefully orchestrated blend of reluctant heroism and strategic ambition. Born in Texarkana, Texas in 1930, his disciplined nature was honed through a background in the military and the founding of his own tech company.

His fiery outsider status resonated with a diverse base of supporters, allowing him to lead both President George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton in the polls by June 1992. Perot’s campaign blended nostalgia for an idealized past with a vision for a secure future. A cocktail of sentiment that captured the frustrations and hopes of many Americans.

Apocalypse: LA

Apocalypse L.A. Economic inequality and dwindling prospects were a driving force during the 1992 election. During the previous decade, the wealthiest Americans had seen their incomes soar by 77% while the typical family’s income barely budged, and the poorest 40% saw their earnings decline. This growing disparity left many feeling betrayed by the political establishment.

While Pat Buchanan was finding more success than Bill Clinton in tapping into voter resentment, Buchanan was finding that populist momentum wasn’t always easy to maintain. Despite his fiery rhetoric, he faced backlash in Michigan when union workers noticed Buchanan’s European car and rejected his phony patriotics. One of Buchanan’s biggest talking points was Japan, which had become a scapegoat for the country’s economic anxieties. Policies made during the Reagan era had opened the doors to Japanese investors, who’d bought up large swathes of U.S. real estate. Yet as the Japanese economy began to falter, the boom of the 1980s turned to bust. The collapse of property values and the retreat of Japanese capital further destabilized regions like Southern California, which was already reeling from cuts in defense spending following the end of the Cold War.

But Buchanan’s fiery rhetoric against Japan had disturbing consequences. America experienced a rise in violent anti-Asian hate crimes across the country, revealing the darker side of the nationalist fervor Buchanan stirred. On top of everything else, California was feeling the strains of this racial violence, and Los Angeles was ready to explode. On March 3rd, 1991, a Los Angeles plumber named George Holliday captured video footage of LAPD officers brutally beating a black motorist, Rodney King. The incident shocked the nation and spurred investigations, including the Christopher Commission, which was tasked with investigating the LAPD. The commission revealed that the LAPD, under both Chief Daryl Gates and his predecessor, William H. Parker, had a decades-long history of targeting minority communities.

The King beating only revealed the extent of the department’s unchecked power, systemic racism, and use of excessive force. Despite these findings, the entrenched power structures within the department allowed Gates to remain in his position, although with less support. The test of justice therefore resided in the trial of the officers involved in the beating. When they were acquitted on nearly all charges on April 29th, 1992, Los Angeles erupted into one of the most devastating urban uprisings in American history.

Early days of the culture war

Early Days of the Culture War In the aftermath of the L.A. riots, Pat Buchanan sought to capitalize on the chaos by stoking fear and advocating for a hardline approach. He made headlines by calling for forceful suppression of the riots and proposing a wall to keep out illegal immigrants. But the primaries had not gone well for Buchanan. All he could do now was try to use his dwindling power to push President Bush further to the right.

Ross Perot, on the other hand, was emerging as a formidable contender. His candidacy resonated with voters across the political spectrum, particularly in California, where polls showed him leading the race. The Bush campaign, already struggling, was further hindered by Vice President Dan Quayle’s controversial remarks blaming single parenthood and the TV show Murphy Brown for the L.A. riots. Quayle’s comments reflected a broader conservative critique of what they saw as liberal permissiveness undermining traditional values. But the show was popular and the press wouldn’t stop bringing it up to others in the campaign who wouldn’t back Quayle’s stance.

Meanwhile, Bill Clinton still had trouble energizing voters. His ties to elite institutions, as well as his history of draft dodging and infidelity, were all hampering his campaign. Although he secured the Democratic nomination, he was still missing the spark that spoke to populist voters. But that was about to change. As time went on, Perot’s campaign began to falter due to his refusal to outline specific policies and growing concerns about his erratic behavior. His lashing out at an NPR reporter over past business dealings signaled deeper issues.

Then fed up with what he saw as a Republican dirty tricks campaign, Perot suddenly dropped out of the race. The Clinton campaign went into overdrive, drawing in Perot’s abandoned voters, securing the black vote, and attempting to win back the Mars, particularly in the wake of the L.A. riots. In this fight, both parties continued to engage in early battles of the culture wars. Rap music, in particular, became a scapegoat for America’s deeper social issues. Pat Buchanan’s speeches blamed rap for glorifying violence and undermining national values, a sentiment echoed by media outlets. Clinton capitalized on this cultural shift by publicly condemning the controversial rap artist Sister Soulja, a move that helped him regain some political momentum with his desired demographics.

As the summer of 1992 progressed, tensions within the Republican Party came to a head. Buchanan was given a primetime speech at the Republican National Convention, where he delivered a dark warning about a cultural war for America’s soul. While his speech fired up the delegates, it also made party leadership uneasy, including Ronald Reagan, who felt that Buchanan’s message was too extreme. It’s yet another moment that highlighted the growing divide within the party and the country, reflecting the broader discontent and uncertainty that defined the 1992 election season.

A Don we can believe in

A dawn we can believe in. What is it about gangsters that people in America so love? This is a country that celebrates them on Broadway, in Guys and Dolls, and flocks to see movies like The Godfather and Goodfellas. Another case in point, when John Gotti, the boss of the Gambino crime family, was being put on trial at the U.S. District Court in Brooklyn in early 1992, supporters gathered in droves.

Close to a thousand demonstrators waved American flags and held signs that read, Free John Gotti, and shouted that the government was their enemy. While Gotti was on trial, the city was also grappling with racial tensions that had been recently made worse by the 1989 killing of Yusuf Howin. Howin was a black teenager who ventured into the Italian neighborhood of Bensonhurst and was shot by an associate of the Gambino crime family. This tension boiled over in 1991 with the Crown Heights riots, which began after a Hasidic man got into a car accident that killed a seven-year-old boy on the sidewalk. The riots that followed have been dubbed America’s first pogrom. In riots that lasted four days, Jewish people and their property were the targets of violence.

One Holocaust survivor committed suicide during the ordeal. David Dinkins, the city’s first black mayor, faced criticism from all sides. This led to another violent riot, this time made up of 10,000 off-duty police officers, many of whom were drunk, violent, and shouting racist slurs. They were led by Rudy Giuliani, who was gunning for the job of mayor and would ultimately succeed in replacing Dinkins. As a former U.S. attorney, Giuliani had helped put mobsters like John Gotti behind bars. Now he was being seen as a political outsider, and his aggressive stance and fiery rhetoric earned him the nickname, the human scream machine.

His performance even gained comparisons to David Duke. But anger and foaming at the mouth is what the people wanted. Giuliani captured the city’s desire for a different kind of leadership. The city’s search for authority reflected the paleoconservative desires. Both Sam Francis and the influential libertarian theorist Murray Rathbard looked to gangsters for answers. While Rathbard saw the violent thuggery of goodfellas as emblematic of liberalism gone wild, both writers saw hope in the Godfather.

The tale of the Corleone crime family reflected the kind of Machiavellian thinking and willingness to fight that the U.S. needed to engage with in order to keep its wholesome culture intact. As the mainstream conservative old order crumbled, they yearned for the kind of strong, powerful figures that could keep the country in order. Maybe democracy wasn’t the answer. Maybe we needed something closer to Don Corleone.

The long tail of the 1992 election

The Long Tale of the 1992 Election As the 1992 election heated up, Clinton’s campaign was all about hammering home the message of economic distress. Clinton strategist James Carville even posted a note in the campaign headquarters that read, the economy’s stupid. It gave Clinton a clear line of attack on Bush. While President Truman had created the American middle class, Bush’s legacy was that of the destructor.

Clinton’s position was helped by the grim headlines. California was declaring bankruptcy, poverty was soaring, and job losses were rampant. Ross Perot had actually re-entered the race in October, and it was marked by a high-stakes media blitz. He bought extensive TV time to deliver half-hour infomercials about his economic plan, which despite their lack of flair, attracted massive viewership. Perot’s spending was enormous, $24 million in just two weeks, but his vision of a nation of hardworking small business owners who would sacrifice for the greater good was still vague. Who would bear the brunt of these sacrifices?

Perot urged Americans to take action, but the details were unclear. Then came the indictment of Bush’s former Secretary of Defense, Caspar Weinberger. He testified that Bush had lied when he said he was unaware of the details of the Iran-Contra scandal that had rattled the second term of the Reagan administration. With Bush now the poster child of the dishonest establishment, Clinton secured a decisive win in the November election. In the popular vote, Clinton got 43%, Bush received 37.5%, and Perot earned 18.9%, the largest amount a third party had received in a U.S. election since 1912. While Clinton had made the economy a major concern, others weren’t so sure.

The economic troubles were symptomatic of deeper issues, of a cultural and societal malaise. In his response to the election results, Sam Francis went so far as to call for a cultural revolution inspired by the Italian communist theorist Antonio Gramsci. He aimed to build a conservative counterculture to challenge the established liberal dominance. Francis called for a grassroots effort, independent from the mainstream political apparatus, that would use forceful topics like abortion rights, gun control, school curricula, and homosexuality to activate followers. From there, it could transform into a national movement. Francis even cited Adolf Hitler’s strategy as showing how something like this could be done.

While it turned into a national socialist identity in Germany, in the U.S., it could turn into a new American conservative identity. But who would lead this cause? In the week following the 1992 election, Donald Trump was talking to the architect Philip Johnson in an attempt to get the 86-year-old to redesign his Atlantic City casino. As Johnson listened to Trump, he remarked that Donald would make a good mafioso. Trump agreed. So while Sam Francis longed for the kind of dignified leader seen in The Godfather, he would get something closer to Goodfellas.

Conclusion

In this summary to When the Clock Broke by John Gans, you’ve learned that the 1992 U.S. presidential election was a transformative time as economic distress and cultural conflict shaped the political landscape. In the campaigns leading up to the election, Bill Clinton effectively capitalized on the economic hardships by emphasizing George H.W. Bush’s failure to address the issues impacting the middle class. But Clinton’s victory was hardly certain. Candidates like Pat Buchanan and Ross Perot gained large followings due to their unconventional approaches.

What people really responded to in 1992 was populist rhetoric that had the power to address deeper societal concerns that lay underneath the economic woes. People wanted an alternative to the mainstream politics that had brought about a lonely, disaffected middle class. Perot offered radical policy prescriptions that captivated a disillusioned electorate. Pat Buchanan, backed by a newly formed paleoconservative movement that brought together the extreme right and libertarians, attempted to push back against the perceived cultural decline with an angrier, darker version of the Republican Party. These dynamics not only influenced the 1992 election, but also set the stage for future political and cultural conflicts. Okay that’s it for this summary.