Video: 'Bush, Clinton, Perot: The first 1992 presidential debate'

(Sunday, October 11, 1992, 8:00-9:30 p.m. EDT, during the 1992 United States presidential election campaign) — Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton, President George H.W. Bush and billionaire businessman Ross Perot clashed over familiar economic and character issues tonight at Washington University in St. Louis in the first of three presidential debates of the 1992 United States presidential general election campaign.

It was the first time three candidates shared a single stage in a televised general election presidential debate.

The confrontation over Clinton’s participation in protests against the Vietnam War was the emotional high point of the 90-minute debate.

Clinton invoked Prescott Bush, the President’s late father, while responding to Bush’s recent charges that the Democrat was “wrong” to demonstrate against the Vietnam War when he was a university student in England and that he needed to explain his 1969 vacation trip to Moscow.

“When Joe McCarthy went around this country attacking people’s patriotism, he was wrong. He was wrong. And a senator from Connecticut stood up to him named Prescott Bush,” Clinton said. “Your father was right to stand up to Joe McCarthy; you were wrong to attack my patriotism. I was opposed to the war but I loved my country.”

Bush did not respond to Clinton’s mention of his father. But he backed away from the Moscow charge–as he first did late last week–and said: “I didn’t question the man’s patriotism. I questioned his judgment and his character.”