Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/052592/05259925.000

Text File | 1992-09-10 | 26KB | 626 lines

                                                                                COVER STORIES, Page 36

ROSS PEROT

"Working folks say. . .`We're not interested in your damn 

POSITIONS, Perot, we're interested in your PRINCIPLES.'"


By HENRY MULLER and RICHARD WOODBURY/DALLAS and H. Ross Perot


    Q. It seems as if you're ready to run.

    A. It's fascinating. If we had been just sitting here and
I said, "I'll bet we can find a guy with a bad Texas accent who
can in one minute say to people on television, `If you want to
put my name on the ballot in all 50 states, I will run as your
candidate,'" and then I'd said, "Now let's go try to get
someone to take the other side of that bet," everybody would
have bet you anything you wanted to, because that won't happen,
and I mention this to make one point. What is happening has
nothing to do with me.

    It has everything to do with people's concerns about where
the country is and where the country is going. There is a deep
concern out there about the kind of country our children will
live in that I don't believe has surfaced in the polls yet.

    And if I want 100,000 volunteers more, all I need to do is
go on some national show with adversarial people . . .


    Q. Adversarial people like journalists?

    A. Yeah, well, like the Sunday shows. Now, it's interesting
that when people are rude or arrogant or condescending, the
switchboard just goes nuts for three days, people signing up
because it makes them angry.

    My last observation, and then you can just ask me anything
you want, is that I have never been around a process that is
more irrelevant to the desired end result than this. The
process we have for selecting a President is irrelevant to
getting a good President for the people.

    What we have now is mud wrestling and dirty tricks and
Willie Horton, and just stuff that everybody goes into a feeding
frenzy over. It encourages virtually everybody who might be a
good President not to run.


    Q. You're in the process of cutting down on public
appearances and boning up on the issues. How is that going?

    A. That's going well. I have large, talented teams doing
that. Everybody in the press wants to know who's on the team.
I'm saying, "I'm sorry, I can't tell you, because you'd spend
all their time talking to them."


    Q. What sort of people are on the team?

    A. It's a cross section. For example, when I'm working on
economic positions, I want to make sure I have a spectrum. I
don't want just the true believers, say, on supply-side
economics. I want to hear all the different views. This is the
way I do things. Then, from all those different views, we will
come up with what our position is. Whether we're working on a
new health-care system, the economy, a new tax system, or
whatever it is, I want to get everybody's views.


    Q. Are you being briefed on this process daily?

    A. It's more than being briefed. Did you see Saturday
Night Live? On television once, I said, "My style is I have to
see it, feel and taste it." And Saturday Night Live added, "And
pass it through my lower intestine." But I have to at least see
it, feel it and taste it. I don't like to get briefed at the
end. I like to be involved with it as it's being put together,
so that's where we are right now.

    But the phone banks are going crazy with working folks
saying, "Why are you wasting your time on this? We're not
interested in your damn positions, Perot. We're interested in
your principles." Isn't that fascinating?


    Q. How would you summarize your principles?

    A. People go to Washington to serve, not to cash in. The
government should come from the people, and we should have a
government that gives people an effective voice. The people feel
very strongly now that they have no voice in their government.

    We have a political system that's driven by getting money.
Running up and down the halls of Congress all day, every day,
are the organized special interests who have the money that
makes it possible to buy the television time to campaign to get
re-elected next year. There are no villains here. It's just
something that has evolved.

    Now make the Congress -- make the White House -- sensitive
to the owners of the country again. That's very important to
me. These are principles of mine.

    We cannot -- it is morally wrong, this is a fundamental
principle -- spend our children's money. To my knowledge, the
President never talks about the $4 trillion debt and what we
should do with it, and yet I'm supposed to have the perfect
solution to it immediately.


    Q. You have also said repeatedly that you favor a
constitutional amendment that would require a vote of the people
before Congress could raise taxes.

    A. Yes.


    Q. How does that help the deficit?

    A. We have a $4 trillion debt. We added 10% to it just
this year because it's an election year. The first thing you
have to do is stop the bleeding. That is the deficit. You
should not continue to build the debt, O.K.?

    Now then, the second thing: our current tax system is a
very ineffective, inefficient tax system basically put together
by special interests over a period of many years, and it's got a
thousand patches on it, all by the special interests. You've got
to change the tax system, and it has to have several
characteristics. One, it's got to be fair. The current tax
system is not. And two, in my judgment, it should be paperless
for most of the people and get rid of this giant, ineffective
bureaucracy we have around the irs.


    Q. When you say the tax system is unfair, to whom do you
think the tax system is unfair?

    A. The grossest inequity I have seen in my adult life is
when they created the new tax system and had the bubble where
people like myself would pay at a lower tax rate than people who
had a lower income. I was publicly on record long before this
came up as saying that's wrong.

    Now, for me to pay a lower rate than some guy making less
than me is a joke. That's wrong. When you look at the taxes
I've paid in my life, I don't have to tip my hat to anybody.
There are individual years where I've paid well over $100
million in taxes. And for a guy who started out with nothing,
you know, I just consider that a happy event, because if you're
paying that much in taxes, things are going pretty well in your
life, right?


    Q. Let's say you're President of the U.S. You have clear
ideas about some of the things that should be done. You have 535
members of Congress down the street. And you haven't been
elected either as a Republican or as a Democrat. How do you get
them on board?

    A. First, my Cabinet will be made up of a cross section of
the best people in both parties. I will have what F.D.R. used
to call "dollar-a-year men," but I won't pay them a dollar, and
they'll be a cross section of both parties. If you have
followed my efforts at all, you have heard me say a thousand
times to the volunteers, "If you elected Solomon as President,
he couldn't solve these problems, the wisest man who ever lived,
and don't think I can alone. And unless you will stay in the
ring with me after November, there's no point in doing this,
because we'll all be failures."

    Now then, if millions of people will stay in the ring with
me and assert their role as owners of the country, and if, see,
when we have these town-hall presentations, Congress, the
Cabinet, the leaders in that particular field, it won't be me
telling the people. It's not a fireside chat. We will really be
explaining this to the people. Congress will be in the middle
of it.

    If you look for me after the election, you won't find me
doing what Presidents have been doing in recent years. I will
be buried night and day in meetings with the leaders of
Congress. And if you ever see me get up every morning and throw
rocks at Congress, just have me led away quietly, because I
understand that Congress is my equal.

    In my sleep I am a better consensus leader than anybody
who's up there now, and if you don't think so, just talk to the
guys I work with, and if you don't think so, talk to the Texas
legislature on the two times I've been down there, got
everything I wanted passed, et cetera, et cetera. O.K.

    I will be buried with leaders. I will make them part of
the process. I will be listening, listening, listening to their
ideas. They will have ideas better than my ideas. In all
probability, what we finally do may be their ideas. It will
probably be some first-term Congressman who shouldn't have had
an idea that good, but it's the best idea, and we take these
ideas to the people, present them to the people. The people say
let's do it, and now we have a system out of gridlock and a
system that works. That's the process I'll use.


    Q. So in other words, these electronic town meetings would
be your way of going over the heads of Congress to put citizen
pressure on Congress?

    A. No, no. Who did I say would be presenting with me?
Congress.


    Q. How are you going to deal with an institution, the U.S.
Congress, that's not structured like a corporation where you can
just talk to the three or four top guys?

    A. O.K. Humor me. Get out of your stereotype cliches that
a guy who runs the company is, you know, an autocrat.


    Q. What --

    A. Just wait a minute. Wait a minute. Look at everything
that has been written about me. Look at every speech I've ever
made to business schools, to business leaders and what have
you. It is the reverse of telling people what to do. Now, facts
probably don't matter. But if facts do matter, there's a very
clear record here that I get things done by building consensus,
and that's what you have to do. The point is, give the people
a vote.

    The next rational question is, Will the people make
mistakes? Sure. We all make mistakes.


    Q. But the other question is, Will the people agree? There
are 250 million Americans with very divergent interests,
different ideas, and at some point somebody's got to cut through
and make some decisions, maybe even some hard choices --

    A. Well, this is Congress's job.


    Q. You're not going to get 250 million people, or even 500
members of Congress, to agree.

    A. You don't expect a unanimous vote. You don't expect
everybody to agree. The majority rules in our country, and let's
assume you built a consensus that is more than a majority. Then
you do it.


    Q. How do you keep special interests from dominating the
town meetings, from distorting what you see as the will of the
people?

    A. I want to revise the system so that it is not so money
hungry at election time. I want to dramatically reduce the cost
of running for office so that people don't have to spend so
much of their time raising money.

    I would personally -- and I will be discussing this openly
with the people and the Congress, and everybody will have his
day -- feel that this PAC money, soft money, these giant
contributions that you can still make, should be eliminated. But
if we do eliminate them, then we have to have a way that people
can run for office without having millions of dollars.

    To run for Governor of Texas is $10 million or $15
million. To run for Senator, I don't know how many millions it
is, but it's obscene. The presidential race is far, far, far
more than the numbers quoted in print because of all the soft
money. Republicans now boast that they have $200 million in soft
money.


    Q. And you're prepared to match that?

    A. I'm prepared. If the people want me to run as their
servant, then I will do everything I can to give them a
world-class campaign. Now, please don't translate that into
"Perot pledges to spend 200 million bucks." I never pledged to
spend 100 million bucks.


    Q. You talked a little while ago about the mud wrestling
that's going on. How different a campaign will yours be? Would
we see fewer speaking engagements, less traveling, or what?

    A. I will have an unconventional campaign, but I cannot
tell my competitors what my strategy and tactics are, which I'm
sure you can understand.


    Q. How do you assess the Republican and Democratic
reactions to you?

    A. The Democrats are rational, and the Republicans are
not. The Democrats are just running their campaign. But the
Republicans -- you know what the Republicans are doing. They
call you reporters all day, every day.


    Q. You're talking about dirty tricks?

    A. Let me say this. If you are in the publishing business
and you don't know what I'm talking about, well, for some
reason they put you on their exclusion list.


    Q. If Bill Clinton's candidacy were to fall apart, and the
Democrats had no candidate and turned to you, would you accept?

    A. That won't happen. No way that would happen.


    Q. But if it were to happen?

    A. It wouldn't happen. I don't think there's any chance
that Governor Clinton will not be the nominee.


    Q. What if there is a "Draft Perot" effort within the
Democratic Party? A couple of party leaders, Willie Brown in
California, for example, have already mentioned this. Would you
accept that nomination?

    A. I think it would be improper to even speculate, because
it won't happen. It just won't happen, guys.


    Q. If you recognized that having two candidates run
against George Bush would elect the incumbent, would you drop
out of the race?

    A. We'd just have to look at all the facts. I don't want
to be disruptive. I don't want to damage the process.


    Q. You've been very hard on George Bush.

    A. Wait a minute. Can we talk about issues? For example,
he was responsible for the banks and the savings and loans, and
look at what it got us. For 10 years his fingerprints were all
over creating Saddam Hussein and putting billions of
taxpayer-guaranteed loans in Hussein's pocket.

    I promise you this: as I make mistakes, I will just say,
"All right, I have made a serious mistake," and get it over
with in one day. Who was in charge of antiterrorism? George
Bush. Who created Noriega? George Bush. Who was in the middle
of Iran-contra? George Bush. When Iran-contra came out, why
didn't they just say he was in charge of antiterrorism? That's
what Iran-contra was. Why didn't he just say, "Well, I blew
that, right?" It's a one-day event.

    As opposed to that, everybody shredded; everybody ran,
ducked and hid. Everybody turned into Teflon, and who got hurt?
The American people got hurt, and we're still paying for Judge
[Lawrence] Walsh to try to figure out what happened. Wouldn't
it have been simpler just to say, "I did it, and here's why I
did it, and in retrospect I shouldn't have done it"?

    I'm not attacking him as a person. I'm not attacking his
personal life. I'm not doing all those things that he directs
that his people do as really the only thing, I guess, they're
able to against anybody who runs against him. And believe me,
you will never hear the words come out of my mouth, "We will do
whatever it takes to win." I think that is irresponsible. And
anybody who thinks that uncontrolled people are out here making
these day-by-day attacks, particularly on Governor Clinton,
believes in the tooth fairy. Those things all come from on high.
Those people all report directly into the White House.


    Q. Are you saying they're doing this with Bush's consent
or without it?

    A. You're sophisticated. I'll let you decide. All right.
Let's assume I have somebody in my organization who's doing
something like that. He might do it once, and that person would
be out of the organization, right? Pretty simple. Yes, it's done
with his approval. It has to be. In Washington, see, nobody
takes responsibility for anything.


    Q. You've said in different ways to different audiences
that you don't have the patience to be President. You said
once, "My orientation toward results would get me into deep
trouble." You've obviously thought about this and decided that
you do, after all, have the temperament?

    A. I think there's a different climate now. People want
things fixed. They want a guy to get under the hood of the car
and fix the engine. I think they're finally ready for somebody
who will go in and fix things as opposed to let things
deteriorate while he goes around and holds news conferences and
two-day summits on various social programs and domestic issues.
They want it done. Now, that's up to them.

    Let's assume that by November they say, "No, we'd just
rather have more smooth talk." That's fine.


    Q. But you're not going to change your temperament. What
you're saying is that the country now wants a temperament like
yours?

    A. What you see is what you get.


    Q. Let's come back to a fundamental issue that is central
to what you're talking about, which is these electronic town
meetings. As you've sketched them out, they're going to involve
the Cabinet, members of Congress . . .

    A. And the leaders in the industry, like health care, who
know most about it.


    Q. Given the fact that it's very hard to get people to
watch television for five, six hours at a go unless it's the
Super Bowl, how are you going to present the issues to the
American people in enough complexity so they can make a rational
decision?

    A. See, your assumption is that the American people like
sound bites. I don't buy your assumption. They want the facts,
they want details; they realize they've been sound-bitten to
death, they realize they've been headlined to death, they
realize they've been jerked around by inaccurate stuff that gets
fed to them. They would really like to understand because,
finally, they pay the bills.


    Q. I've talked to a variety of political scientists,
polling experts, et cetera, about your --

    A. You're on the wrong end. You talked to the
Establishment. If I were a pollster, I would say, "What's this?
My job is to tell you what people think. I get paid 100,000
bucks every time I tell you."

    Now, I love your polling guy. Let's just follow your logic
all the way through. I would say that, my God, you'd better cut
out general elections too, because they're certainly not
scientific either. How do I even know that a cross section of
America shows up to vote? My God, we have a flaw in the system.
We'd better go to polling to select our candidates, right? Just
follow your logic all the way down to the ridiculous end, and
you come out there.

    This is light-years beyond the pollster calling. We run
this country now by what the pollsters say. You know that and
I know that, and you know to your toes that both parties don't
make a move until they take a poll. If you ever see me doing
that, just have me led away, because that is so goofy, you know.
It's not what's the right thing to do. Let's take a poll and
then follow the wind. O.K.

    The logic of all these people that you talk to just flies
apart when you look at it. The town hall is 20 times better than
polls in terms of knowing what people think. Polls are a
reaction. The town-hall reaction is after you're informed.


    Q. But the point is, the whole nature of representative
democracy is that a conscientious member of Congress -- and
there are some -- can say, "Yeah, the people back home,
according to the polls, are against me on this issue, but I
believe in my gut that it's the right issue, and I'm going to
do it anyway."

    A. Terrific. Terrific. I'm for that guy. I love that guy.


    Q. But in the model you set up, it is basically that these
Congressmen would have to be, in essence, robots to that sort
of --

    A. No, that's your conclusion. Did you ever hear me say
that? You said that.


    Q. There's been a lot of debate about how transferable a
business leader's skills would be in the political government
world. Your style has always been make it happen, and things
have happened. Do you see a lot of frustrations, a lot of
butting up against brick walls?

    A. No. There are a thousand frustrations in making it
happen anyway, see. My life has not been limited to the business
world. For example, getting the North Vietnamese to change the
treatment our POWS received was not a corporate event. That's
just something that I had to start from scratch and get millions
of people from this country and around the world to express
anger about, and they changed the treatment, and more men
survived. So can we agree that was not a CEO giving orders?

    Now then, my activities on drugs and education were not a
CEO giving orders. Again and again and again I've had to go
build consensuses, get people to do things, and get them done,
and I listen to people. I don't order people around.


    Q. What's your current idea on choosing a Vice President?
I mean, how are you going to go about it?

    A. Just studying the issue. I'm working on it myself. I
just want a person who's fully qualified. And I've said again
and again, if the American people's reaction is that we ought
to reverse the ticket, that's fine with me.


    Q. Do you ever have any doubts about what you're doing? Do
you ever wake up at 3 o'clock in the morning and wonder if this
is crazy?

    A. I don't wake up in the middle of the night. I'm not
strung out. You see, I have a very strong feeling that we all
have a thermostat setting on stress.

    The one time I could ever relate to stress was during the
rescue of our people from Iran. We had people's lives at risk,
I had my life at risk, we had the company at risk. My children
could have lost a father, putting it on a very personal basis
when I was in there in the prisons and what have you. When Paul
and Bill and the rescue team were coming out overland, see,
they'd done the impossible. They'd got out of prison. And just
sitting there and waiting for them to get to the Turkish border,
that was stress.


    Q. What about Harry Truman's comment after he took over as
President when Roosevelt died, "I felt like the sun and the moon
and the stars had all fallen on my shoulders"? As you are about
to embark on this almost certain race for the White House, don't
you worry at some times whether you too are worthy of bearing
that weight?

    A. Yes. The greatest thing that would break my heart is if
I got there and could not do the job for the American people,
and that's the reason I've spent so much time telling them that I
can't do it by myself. I know that. The thing I will hate, hate
-- not dislike, hate -- is the strange life we have created for
our President where he is totally out of touch with reality, and
where he is fed and briefed, and I will not get in that trap.
I will break out of it. And everybody says security, security.
You can't really be a good, effective leader if you are
isolated, and we have totally isolated our President from
reality.


    Q. Given all the Secret Service protection and all the
entourage protection, how would you break out, how could you
break out?

    A. Just watch me. I will not live like a Third World
dictator. I will not have a motor cavalcade. It has nothing to
do with security. It has everything to do with the regal
presidency.

    I will not shut down entire road systems so that I can
drive from point A to point B without having to stop at a
stoplight.


    Q. The entire city of New York will vote for you if you
promise that.

    A. The point is, if traffic is bad in New York City and
I'm in New York City, I want to know that traffic is bad in New
York City.

    I will have to have privacy. I will not live my life, you
know, 100% exposed. This business of the press following the
President if he goes out to have dinner with a friend at night
-- I'm going to have to work that out with the press. I'll say,
"Guys, I'm just a human being. I've got to have a little private
life. If anything's happening, I'll let you know. But, you know,
don't follow me around, don't hound me. And in return, I'll have
a lot of press conferences with you."


    Q. Is your family prepared to campaign?

    A. No. I don't want to involve them in the campaign.
Margot will do something. She won't be a Barbie doll. You know,
I don't want my family to be brutalized. And this goes back to
where we started. We have a process that's irrelevant to
selecting a good candidate.


    Q. If this effort gets up to, say, 41, 42 states, 43, and
then stops, what then?

    A. That won't happen. All the volunteers have already
networked. They'll swarm into those states and get it done.


    Q. The official announcement is just a formality, then?

    A. No, no, no. Tomorrow something could come up and
everybody might say let's drop it. This is driven from the
bottom up. The [opposition's] strategy now is to try to get
the American people to drop it.


    Q. Can we narrow the announcement date down to --

    A. Not really, no. No, I don't have to do this. No, I
could wait till August. You know, what's the hurry? If all 50
states are done, I don't even need to make an announcement. I've
already said I'll do it.

    Let's assume that the American people want to keep things
the way they are. I hope it's apparent to you, I will be
tickled to death to stay down here, look after my business,
enjoy my family.