Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/052592/05259923.000

Text File | 1992-09-10 | 6KB | 117 lines

                                                                                COVER STORIES, Page 34

ROSS PEROT

Perot and his Presidents


He portrays himself as an outsider, but in the Washington game
of money and muscle he is actually the consummate inside player

By MARGARET CARLSON -- With reporting by Melissa August/
Washington


    Ross Perot bases his crusade for the presidency on being
an outsider, a political ingenue who wouldn't know a
Gucci-shoed lobbyist if he tripped over one. This reformer would
have the public believe he has nothing in common with the fools
in Washington. He supports a ban on "these guys with their
alligator shoes," who swarm over the halls of Congress trying
to open loopholes large enough to drive their leased Jaguars
through.

    The problem is that Perot is one of these guys, albeit in
wingtips with a military shine. He has backslapped and
arm-twisted with the best of them, winning lucrative non-bid
government contracts and appealing decisions he didn't like to
higher, more malleable authorities, having loosened them up with
huge gifts. Beneath Perot's white shirts and CEO bluster beats
the heart of an insider who has been playing the game for 25
years.

    Although he talks as if he needs a visa to go inside the
Beltway, Perot has dined at the White House, sailed on the
presidential yacht Sequoia and lobbied the Oval Office, the
Cabinet and Capitol Hill. In 1975, for example, he pulled off
a coup most lobbyists only dream about. Late one night as the
House Ways and Means Committee tied up the loose ends in that
year's tax bill, then Democratic Congressman Phil Landrum of
Georgia introduced an amendment that might have been the largest
one-time tax break in history, granting Perot an unheard-of
capital-loss carry-back. Perot had contributed more than $27,000
to 12 members of the Ways and Means Committee. Ten of the
recipients voted for the amendment, though it was later snuffed
out in conference.

    A partial explanation of Perot's success is his
equal-opportunity giving. In 1972 he forked over $200,000 to
Richard Nixon's re-election campaign. Meanwhile, two Perot
executives channeled $100,000 to the presidential campaign of
Arkansas Democrat Wilbur Mills, then chairman of the House Ways
and Means Committee. In 1974, according to Common Cause, Perot
gave $90,000 each to the Republicans and Democrats. Although
Perot has shown little regard for George Bush, he gave $8,000
to Bush-Quayle committees and $51,000 to the Republican Party
between 1979 and 1991.

    Perot has had access to Presidents since he first visited
Lyndon Johnson at his Texas ranch. Perot was Ronald Reagan's
kind of guy. Reagan appointed him to the President's Foreign
Intelligence Advisory Board. Reagan thanked Perot for
bankrolling three attempts to rescue American hostages in
Lebanon. When he was Vice President, Bush arranged for Perot to
have a private conversation with Reagan at Blair House to
discuss American prisoners Perot believed were being held
captive in Southeast Asia. Perot reported that the President had
"personally asked me to stay on top of the issue." But when
Reagan cooled on Perot's crusade, Perot reneged on an earlier
promise of $2 million to the Reagan library.

    Of all the Administrations Perot has embraced, he was
closest to Richard Nixon's. He was on the phone to the Nixon
White House several times a week in 1970 and 1971. Sometimes the
subject was casual, such as imploring a White House staffer not
to eat on the plane so he could dine with Perot and his wife.
Other times it was serious, such as agreeing to the
Administration's request that he shore up Wall Street by taking
over a nearly bankrupt brokerage.

    In addition to financial contributions, Perot paid the
salaries of 10 Electronic Data Systems employees while they
worked on Nixon's 1968 campaign. When the IRS challenged Perot
for taking a deduction on his company's tax bill for his
political contributions, the White House, according to a memo,
was "modestly helpful" to Perot in his efforts to reach a
settlement with the agency. The next year, he spent $1 million
on newspaper ads and a 30-minute TV program called United We
Stand to drum up support for Nixon's Vietnam policy. According
to documents in the Nixon archives, some of Perot's access came
on a promise to spend $50 million to get the President favorable
coverage by buying a newspaper and a television network. (John
Ehrlichman took the offer seriously enough to estimate the cost
of a network takeover at $400 million.)

    Perot never put up most of the money, but he got the
influence he sought. The Nixon White House helped free up
$308,000 from the Social Security Administration, which claimed
that Perot had overcharged for processing Medicare claims. It
also helped Perot win a $62,500 contract without competitive
bidding, even though it was over the $10,000 limit.

    In operating inside the corridors of power, Perot has not
broken any laws. The Constitution protects the right of citizens
to go wingtip to wingtip with their leaders. But if there is
anything voters are asking of those who would be President this
time around, it is that they be honest about who they are. At
the moment, the poetry of the Perot campaign -- what he is
selling and thousands of volunteers are buying -- is the image
of a Texas outrider ready to represent the little guy against
the power brokers and reclaim the country from moral paralysis.
It is an appealing image in this year of voter unrest, but only
to the extent that it is true.