By Bob Benenson, CQ Politics Editor

When it comes to electing the president, the modern campaign era has its roots 95 years ago when North Dakota held the first presidential primary. CQ Politics looks back and charts for you, election by election, how this process grew over the last century into the long and sprawling campaigns that have become part of the political landscape. This fifth in a series covers 1992.

President George Bush’s job approval ratings soared in early 1991, as a broad international coalition led by U.S. troops ended Iraq’s occupation of neighboring Kuwait and forced Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein into terms of surrender that including destruction of his stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. He also was expected to enjoy political benefits from the collapse of the Soviet Union and other eastern European communist regimes, which ended more than four decades of Cold War.

But his political timing proved awful. By the end of the year, and on the eve of his campaign for re-election, Bush’s approval ratings had tanked. One reason was his attempt to downplay the effects of a serious recession — a strategy that angered many voters and gave him a hard-to-shake image of being out of touch with the realities of everyday Americans.

And although Bush ultimately won the renomination with relative ease, he had to quell a rebellion within the ranks of conservative Republicans. The federal deficit had been stubbornly high since the presidency of Ronald Reagan, who emphasized tax cuts, and concerns over the long-term impact heightened pressure to reduce the red ink. Though Bush demanded that the Democratic-controlled Congress work to rein in spending, he ultimately agreed to a budget deal that included tax increases. Many conservatives who had long been skeptical of Bush cried betrayal, especially in light of the sweeping pledge he made in his acceptance speech at the 1988 Republican convention when he had declared: “Read my lips. No new taxes.”

The dissent on the right provided fuel for a campaign by Pat Buchanan, longtime conservative commentator and former aide to President Richard M. Nixon. Buchanan challenged Bush for the GOP nomination on both the economy and on a perception that Bush gave only lip service to key social issues of concern to conservatives.

Bush had no opposition in the Iowa caucuses, but Buchanan staged a full-blown campaign in New Hampshire — a state that had been hit hard by the recession — and held the president to a mediocre victory of 53 percent to 37 percent. Buchanan never seriously threatened Bush’s front-runner status, and the contest for the nomination was effectively over with the year’s much smaller “Super Tuesday” as Bush swept the eight primaries held that day, predominantly in the South. Buchanan nonetheless received significant vote shares in most of the contests, topping 25 percent as late as the California primary on June 2. He was enough of a factor to receive a prime-time speaking slot at that summer’s convention, something the Bush campaign came to regret after Buchanan made a strongly ideological and controversial speech in which he declared that the nation was embroiled in a “culture war.”

Bush went on to lose the general election to Democrat Bill Clinton, whose outsized personality enabled him to survive persistent questions about his personal life that likely would have crippled the campaigns of most other candidates. Few, if any, presidential candidates have better converted a second-place finish in the New Hampshire primary into a springboard to the nomination.

The Democratic campaign turned into a free-for-all after three-term New York Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, widely viewed as a potential front-runner, decided not to enter the race. Clinton, already the veteran governor of Arkansas at age 46, was little known nationally, but soon drew media attention that made him a top-tier contender in a field that also included former Sen. Paul Tsongas of Massachusetts, Sens. Bob Kerrey of Nebraska and Tom Harkin of Iowa and former Gov. Jerry Brown of California, who had staged a late-starting bid for the 1976 nomination.

With the other candidates ceding to Harkin’s favorite-son status in Iowa, the New Hampshire primary was the first big showdown — and the place where Clinton’s campaign almost sank before it really began due to allegations by an Arkansas woman named Gennifer Flowers, who said she had a 12-year affair with the candidate. Clinton denied the claim, backed by his wife, Hillary Rodham Clinton , and the two made a sympathetic appearance in an interview with the CBS News show “60 Minutes” just before the primary. Clinton lost the primary but won the expectations game. His camp succeeded at spinning Tsongas’ 33 percent finish for first place as mediocre, given that his home town of Lowell, Mass., is just a few miles from the New Hampshire border, while Clinton’s second-place showing at 25 percent was spun as a measure of his resilience: Clinton himself claimed the title of “The Comeback Kid” in a primary night statement that had all the trappings of a victory speech.

Clinton had to fight a while longer for the nomination. Brown narrowly edged him in the Colorado primary March 3. Tsongas — who had been out of politics since 1984, when health problems compelled him to decline a Senate re-election bid — hung in for a while with a campaign that focused strongly on his reputation as a “fiscal hawk” who would seek to reduce the federal deficit. He won primaries in Maryland on March 3 and in Massachusetts and Rhode Island on March 10, while accusing Clinton of making fiscally irresponsible promises to curry votes. As a campaign gimmick, Tsongas brandished a stuffed toy he called “Pander Bear.” But Clinton won a series of victories and soon gained unstoppable momentum.

With the public in a surly mood toward the federal government and expressing dissatisfaction with both major parties, the on-off-and-on-again independent campaign of billionaire Texas businessman H. Ross Perot lent an air of unpredictability to the general election campaign. Condemning business as usual in Washington and emphasizing the dangers of deficit spending and his opposition to free-trade deals that he called job killers, Perot announced his candidacy during a February 1992 appearance on CNN’s “Larry King Live,” briefly soared past Bush and Clinton in national polls, quit the race in July and then re-entered to stay in early October. But his appeal was undercut by his quirky behavior, which included his accusation during a “60 Minutes” appearance that Republican dirty tricksters had sought to disrupt his daughter’s wedding. Though his 19 percent share of the popular vote was one of the strongest ever for a third-party candidate he did not come close to winning the electoral votes of any state.

Clinton, who chose Al Gore as his running mate, presented a dynamic image in his bid to become the first “baby boomer” elected president, while Bush — a World War II veteran with a long record of public service — often appeared peeved that voters were thinking about replacing him with an upstart. It did Bush no good when a camera caught him looking at his wristwatch during a debate with Clinton and Perot. Clinton won by 43 percent to 37 percent, carrying 32 states and the District of Columbia.

• Part One: 1912-64

• Part Two: 1968-72

• Part Three: 1976-84

• Part Four: 1988

• Part Six: 1996

• Part Seven: 2000

• Part Eight: 2004