Bush had inherited a rapidly mounting federal deficit from the Reagan administration, in great part due to Reagan's lowering of taxes which was a policy designed to put more money in people's pockets and thus stimulate the economy back into greater activity to bring it out of the 1979-1982 recession.  But his lowering of the tax rate also meant that the government would be taking in less revenue to pay for its expenses.  The idea was supposed to have been that the government would also cut its expenses at the same time.  Thus the two, income and expenses, would balance, but at a lower figure (the Republican goal was simply to reduce the role of government in the life of the nation).  But the reduction of government spending had not happened.  And thus a huge imbalance in the budget occurred over the 1980s.

The public debt more than tripled in the eight years of the Reagan Administration. The debt went from an equivalent of one third of the total production of the American national economy (GDP or Gross Domestic Product) to about two thirds of the nation's growing GDP eight years later.

There was some concern about what Bush could do to bring the government revenues and expenditures back into line. But Bush promised his Republican supporters, during his 1988 campaign for the presidency, that he would impose no new taxes as a way of doing so.  He emphasized this decision with the famous words (that would soon come to haunt him): "read my lips, no new taxes."  This meant he would have to reduce government spending instead.

However, a small recession in the economy (a rather typical part of the national business cycle) hit during his presidency and unemployment rose, which kicked into gear more government spending in the form of unemployment benefits.  And the Gulf War also brought on more, not less, government spending.  Thus the deficit was not being brought under control by reduced government spending. Instead, spending continued to increase at the rate it had during the previous eight years.

Ultimately Bush, still determined to bring the deficit under control, in cooperation with a Democratic Party controlled Congress moved to enact increases in the U.S. tax code.  This bold but quite necessary move would later come to hurt him greatly when he sought re-election in 1992.

Many Republicans had not forgotten how Bush had betrayed his promise of no new taxes when he went ahead and raised taxes in his effort to try to balance the federal budget.  But even then, the budget seemed no closer than ever to coming under the discipline of balance.

This gave a billionaire businessman, Ross Perot, the opportunity to step forward and open up a third-party presidential race as the 1992 elections approached.  He promised to balance the budget, and touched on a number of other popular gripes about the government Establishment in Washington (gripes by both Democrats and Republicans).  His campaign was very unusual in that he personally paid for much of his own campaign expenses, briefly dropped out of the race, then changed his mind and re-entered the campaign, and at one point flew off to Vietnam to bring goods to American soldiers still held as prisoners of war (POWs) in that country – though Vietnam would not let him in. His popularity rose and fell with his various actions and pronouncements, at one point in June of 1992 reaching 39 percent, and ahead of Bush (31 percent) and ahead of Clinton, the Democratic Party front runner (25 percent).

By the time of the election in November that Perot figure was 19 percent. This was not enough to gain the presidency.  But it was enough to ensure that the winner would have not a majority of the nation's votes, but instead a mere plurality.  That turned out to be Clinton, with 43 percent of the vote to Bush with only 37.5 percent.

Thus it was that despite the victory in the Cold War during Bush's presidency, despite the great military victory America experienced in the Middle East under Bush's leadership, Bush was not able to pull a re-election as president in the 1992 elections.  He had dropped behind Clinton, not only because of his effort to redress the huge imbalance in the federal budget and the growing deficit but also due to the small economic decline experienced in the six months prior to the election. Actually, the economy was beginning to pick back up at election time, although this had not registered itself in the minds of the American voter.  Indeed, the American economy was on its way to a period of expansion that would become the largest and longest economic peace-time expansion in American history.  But Bush would get none of the credit for this.

In part this was also due to Clinton's announcement concerning his readiness to try new things, especially in the area of health care, and just institute change in general, a concept that always appealed to the American spirit, but appealed especially to the Boomer spirit which at this point was moving into the mainstream of voting America. And Clinton, himself a Boomer, was indeed their champion.e

America had in fact elected a Boomer husband-wife team to the White House. Both Bill and his wife Hillary were shrewd, accomplished lawyers; both had equal ambitions to get to the White House.   Bill was a brainy, light-hearted student leader in his Georgetown University undergraduate days (1964-1968). He had a wide range of talents (including the playing of the saxophone) and well-developed instincts for self-promotion.  He avoided the Vietnam draft and instead was sent to Oxford University in England as a Rhodes Scholar (1968-1969).  Hillary was a serious, academically and politically focused student at Wellesley, becoming the first student at Wellesley to deliver the commencement address, which was received with a seven-minute standing ovation (which received considerable national attention). Bill and Hillary both went on to Yale Law School (early 1970s) where they met, and supported each other's widening political interests.  Both eventually moved to Arkansas (Bill's home state) and both became Law school faculty at the University of Arkansas.  Finally in 1975 Hillary set aside her hesitations and married Bill.

In the meantime (1974), Bill put his political ambitions to work and ran as the Democratic candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives.  He was defeated in the election, but two years later was elected (actually he was unopposed) as Arkansas Attorney General.  This set him up for a run as the state's governor in 1978, which he won, becoming the country's youngest state governor.  As governor, he undertook a number of reforms, including a tax designed to strengthen the state's finances, but which angered voters who turned him out of office in 1980.  But he was back as governor two years later, and remained in that position for the next ten years. During those years, while Hillary worked on building the couple's financial fortunes,¹  Bill worked on reforming the state's educational profile, which went from being the lowest-testing state in the union to the most greatly improved, in fact being one of the best in the nation, drawing him much attention from the nation in the process.

In 1988 he delivered a (long) opening night address at the Democratic National Convention, bringing him closer to his dream of running for the U.S. presidency. Soon thereafter he began laying plans to gain the Democratic Party's presidential nomination for the next election (1992), slowly working his way forward in the primaries of 1992 until he was able to bring in Florida, Texas, New York and California.  He had the nomination. He campaigned hard, did well in the presidential debates and in November secured the plurality of American voters in order to be able to enter the White House in January of 1993.

Clinton as a child and youth had grown up in anything but a normal family and community. His actual father died in a car accident just before Clinton's birth in 1946, and his widowed mother remarried four years later to an alcoholic who was physically abusive to her.  His mother was active, dramatic, and secured medical education for herself, whereas his "father" was outwardly quiet and not terribly successful.  When Clinton was six, the family moved from the quiet little rural Baptist town of Hope, to the bustling, multi-ethnic (from all corners of the world) and corrupt (gambling, Mafia, etc.) resort city of Hot Springs (Arkansas).  The cultural setting was hardly that of Middle America, so dominant elsewhere in the 1950s.  But it would certainly offer the young Clinton a very broad understanding that there were unlimited ways of going at life.  Besides being a Boomer, the Hot Springs experience would make the toleration of all social-cultural differences totally natural to Clinton.

Just as unusual was the way young Clinton walked by himself of a Sunday morning to attend the huge Park Place Baptist Church where he attended Sunday School and worship regularly (unlike his parents).  Then at age nine he took the major step of confessing Jesus as Lord of his life and getting baptized, an event he claimed was a major part of his personal development.  He wanted to be a "good person" (quite understandable, considering all the moral complications that surrounded him).  Also, as both parents were active and thus absent working outside the home, it was his family housekeeper that would help shape Clinton's personal development during his youth.  The message she pressed on Clinton was basically that of "live and let live, for God will ultimately take care of all matters." But the brutality of his alcoholic "father" (Clinton took the name Clinton from his stepfather, not his birth father) toward his mother, and the emotional refuge church attendance offered him, turned the young Clinton even more closely to God.  That sense of Christian refuge would always be a key part of his understanding of his Christian faith and its place in his life.

Another event that shaped strongly his faith was when the Billy Graham crusade came to town, and Graham refused to segregate (Black/White) the event, touching Clinton's heart deeply.  Clinton would always hold a very high regard of Graham from then onward.

Education became another escape-hatch for Clinton, who disciplined himself greatly as a learner, and had some wonderful teachers to challenge him.  The highly energetic – actually, highly driven – Clinton became active in a vast number of organizations, scholastic, musical, and just social. He seemed to win nearly every award possible, thus distinguishing himself as a natural leader.  In all this he remained a dedicated Christian, seeing himself as called by God, to make a difference in his world.

And thus it was that he gained entrance to the prestigious School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, right there in the nation's capital where he would also come to know firsthand the idea of national politics, and grow thoughts about higher political service.  At Georgetown, he was elected president of his freshman and then sophomore class, but lost the election his senior year – because it was the age of rebellion (1967-1968) and classmates had come to view him as too "pro-Establishment" at the school.

Meanwhile, not untypical of that age group, church attendance for Clinton dropped away, and would stay that way through his years at Oxford and Yale.  It would not be until he returned to Arkansas, and ran for public office that he would resume church attendance. In fact it would not be until 1980, when he failed to be re-elected as the young state governor, that his church attendance would again become a regular Sunday event.  Some of this was undoubtedly political posturing (he had lost his re-election as governor to an active churchgoer), but part of it was undoubtedly authentic, as he sought God's support in the road that still lay ahead.

And yes, he was a "born-again" Christian, but one that had a hard time identifying with the social-political conservatism of much of the Evangelical world around him in the Deep South.  However, the huge Immanuel Baptist Church he attended in Little Rock was, like himself, much more Liberal in its social views, and Clinton would grow close to Immanuel's pastor, W.O. Vaught, and remain so all the way up until Vaught's death in 1989. Hillary however would remain true to her Methodist upbringing, attending the also Liberal First United Methodist Church in Little Rock, even teaching Sunday School there.

When in 1993 the Clinton's came to reside in the White House, the two eventually attended together quite regularly the Foundry United Methodist Church located nearby.  And Clinton's relationship with Graham deepened, Graham being called on to deliver the benediction at Clinton's inauguration ceremony and the two meeting often for prayer and consultation thereafter.

¹One of the Clinton's financial ventures, the Whitewater Development Corporation – a vacation properties investment venture undertaken with Jim and Susan McDougal in 1978 – failed badly a few years later.  Then in 1992 McDougal's Madison Guarantee Savings and Loan Association was accused by the New York Times of illegally granting money from the financially shaky (and ultimately insolvent) Madison Guarantee to the Clinton campaign organization.  This raised other questions, such as the possible involvement of McDougal's bank in funding the Whitewater venture as well. Soon accusations about various questionable financial transactions (and Hillary's and her Rose Law Firm's involvement as legal counsel to the McDougals) were raising the matter to the level of major political scandal.  And in 1995 – with Clinton in the White House as U.S. president – the U.S. Senate finally set up the Whitewater Committee to look into the matter.  Ultimately in 1998 (as the public's attention was turning to the Lewinsky-Clinton sex scandal) the Whitewater Special Prosecutor Ken Starr (who was also now investigating the Lewinsky scandal) concluded that there was insufficient evidence in the Whitewater affair to indict the Clintons of any criminal act (although fifteen other people were convicted of various crimes in this matter – including Jim Guy Tucker, Governor of Arkansas) – and the investigation was thus dropped.