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

(Monday, October 19, 1992, 9:00-10:30 p.m. EDT; during the 1992 United States presidential election campaign) — The last of the three 2012 presidential general election debates ended tonight with President George H.W. Bush still on the defensive about his first-term record and laboring to revive his campaign by warning that Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton lacked the leadership, the record, and the character to be president.

In their most spirited, direct exchange yet, Bush assailed Clinton’s record in Arkansas, his economic proposals, and what Bush asserted was a habit of trying to have it both ways on issue after issue.

Clinton, responding to the President’s attacks, hammered Bush’s economic stewardship and resurrected his broken pledge from 1988: “I really can’t believe Bush is still trying to make trust an issue after ‘read my lips.’ ”

The Democratic Governor also joined with Ross Perot, the independent candidate, in opening a withering critique of Bush’s handling of events leading to the conflict with Iraq.

Bush, who entered this debate at the Michigan State University in East Lansing with a clear and persistent deficit in public opinion polls, gave his most aggressive performance yet but did not appear to deliver the devastating blow to Clinton that Republicans had hoped for.

Bush contended, repeatedly, that Clinton was a throwback to Democratic big-government and tax-and-spend policies that were abhorrent to the voters.

“Mr. and Mrs. America, when you hear him say we’re going to tax only the rich, watch your wallet because his figures don’t add up, and he’s going to sock it right to the middle-class taxpayer and lower, if he’s going to pay for all the spending programs he proposes,” Bush declared.

In one of the sharpest exchanges of the evening, Clinton criticized the President for initially saying that James A. Baker 3d, the White House chief of staff and former Secretary of State, would return to the foreign-policy post and days later saying that Baker would be in charge of the economy.

“I’ll make some news in the third debate,” Clinton said. “The person responsible for economic policy in my administration will be Bill Clinton.”

Bush responded hotly: “That’s what worries me. He’s going to be responsible.”

And striking a persistent theme reminiscent of the Republican attack against Gov. Michael S. Dukakis in 1988, he added that Clinton “would do for the United States what he’s done to Arkansas.”

That remark prompted Clinton to interrupt “to defend the honor of my state” and defend his record.

But Clinton also delivered a biting critique of Bush’s economic stewardship, saying that the President’s “trickle-down economics” had been a failure.