Three candidates participated in the presidential debates for the first time in 1992: President Bush (R), former Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton (D), and Texas billionaire Ross Perot, running as a third-party candidate.
Mr. Perot had several memorable lines: 鈥淭he party is over and it鈥檚 time for the cleanup crew.鈥� 鈥淚 don鈥檛 have any experience in running up a $4 trillion debt. I don鈥檛 have any experience in gridlock government where nobody takes responsibility for anything and everybody blames everybody else.鈥�
But the defining moment of the Bush-Clinton-Perot debates was an unconscious gesture by Bush: During the second debate in Richmond, Va., on Oct. 15, 1992, Bush checked his watch 鈥� twice.
The gesture seemed to illustrate Bush's impatience with domestic issues, especially the economy. His presidential approval rating had fallen to about 40 percent as the US struggled to recover from the 1990 recession, and he also reneged on his pledge not to raise taxes.
"They took a little incident like that to show that I was, you know, out of it," Bush said in the 2008 interview with PBS's Mr. Lehrer. "They made a huge thing out of that."
