Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/072792/07279922.000

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                                                                                THE CAMPAIGN, Page 32

Perot Takes a Walk


The inside story of how the rookie politician turned into a
quitter, leaving his supporters in the lurch

By LAURENCE I. BARRETT -- With reporting by Ann Blackman/
Washington, Ratu Kamlani/New York and Richard Woodbury/Dallas


    Ross Perot's aura of cranky independence and his refusal
to be bound by familiar candidate-craft made him attractive, at
first, to voters weary of politicos from central casting. But
those same qualities, carried to excess, barred the Texas
billionaire from expanding his astonishingly strong start into
a durable effort. When he fled the field last week, Perot
explained his retreat the way he had justified his invasion in
February -- just doing his public duty. Then, in the face of
charges that he was deserting the volunteers he had mobilized,
he offered to construct a third force that would exert leverage
on the major parties.

    Gerald Rafshoon, a Carter White House alumnus who served
briefly as a media adviser, left the organization believing that
"Perot has made it a cult of personality and has a messianic
vision of himself." But Perot did make one important concession
to convention when he hired two experienced handlers in early
June to run his campaign. Ed Rollins had directed Ronald
Reagan's 1984 campaign, and Hamilton Jordan had managed Jimmy
Carter's efforts in 1976 and '80. Their mission was to convert
Perot's feisty guerrilla operation into a force capable of
waging a general election campaign.

    From the beginning, Perot chafed at the arrangement.
Rollins, in charge of day-to-day operations, drafted an
expansive budget of $150 million, including a direct-mail
campaign and broadcast advertising. But Perot's two longtime
business associates, Tom Luce and Morton Meyerson, decided that
it would be prudent if they, rather than Rollins and Jordan,
presented the spending plan to Perot. Luce feared a volcanic
reaction from the boss and wanted to spare the new recruits.

    Perot promptly cut it in half anyway. He balked at direct
mail, for instance. You mean, he said, the kind of junk I throw
away? Perot also recoiled at the idea of polling. That's what
ordinary candidates do, he said; I don't need it. Despite that
opposition, Rollins took on a pollster and labeled the effort
"market research."

    The biggest dispute was over broadcast advertising.
Jordan, in charge of strategy, wanted to get started quickly.
Perot approved some preliminary work but deferred any final
decisions. He had made his initial splash on TV talk shows and
insisted that he could continue to communicate that way for
free. The argument that he had to reach a much broader audience
left him cold.

    Media coverage had already moved from its gee-whiz phase
to the relentless scrutiny that new candidates always suffer.
I've hired all you guys, Perot complained last month, and now
I'm getting a lousy press. His way of dealing with that was to
carp about criticism and Republican "dirty tricks" rather than
take initiatives that command positive attention. In early
July, with the campaign sagging, Jordan confronted Perot. It
isn't working, the veteran told the novice. Unless you let us
make some basic changes, I'll quit. Perot wished Jordan well
and said he should leave anytime he wished. Outbluffed, Jordan
retreated to his office and did nothing.

    Rollins then took his turn at facing down Perot. It's time
to make some decisions, Rollins argued, time to define yourself
in voters' minds before your rivals and the press do the job
their way. Perot put him off. The deal breaker from Rollins'
viewpoint was Perot's dismissal of Hal Riney, whose firm
Rollins had retained to create TV commercials. Perot thought
Riney's fees far too high. Why should I spend $100,000 to shoot
a single ad, Perot demanded, when I can get as much free time
on talk shows as I want?

    The reasons for Rollins' and Jordan's sense of urgency
were obvious. Starting in mid-June, the growth of Perot's
support stalled, then turned downward. In a TIME/CNN survey
conducted on June 3 and 4, Perot led his rivals with 37%. Five
weeks later, in a TIME/CNN poll conducted just before the
Democratic National Convention, Perot got 26%.

    At a time when Perot should have been enhancing the
electorate's picture of him, his message stagnated. What did get
through to the public was largely negative. Tough press accounts
of Perot's business practices, particularly his use of private
investigators, made an impression. So did the constant
assertion that Perot lacked a program to flesh out his promise
of "action, action, action." When asked if "the lack of detail
in Perot's proposals for solving the country's problems" worried
them, 61% of voters said yes.

    "When is it going to be fun again?" Perot asked his
advisers several times. The intensity of criticism was clearly
getting to Perot. Instead of fun, every maneuver seemed to cause
new pain. His policy advisers finally crafted a fiscal program
incorporating his ideas about reducing the federal deficit. It
contained such an austere mix of spending cuts and tax increases
that Perot realized it would be hazardous to his political
health to adopt it. If I do the right thing, he complained, I
lose. "Do I change my position?"

    Last Wednesday morning, a mediation attempt by Luce having
failed, Rollins quit. Jordan was named the sole manager, and
Luce announced that the campaign would continue. In fact, Perot
had been thinking for a day or two about withdrawing but told
no one. Perot canceled two appearances scheduled for later in
the week and took counsel with himself. That night Perot met
with Luce and Meyerson. Though they talked for an hour, Perot's
mind was already made up. Meyerson made the case for fighting
on. "This is what I'm going to do," Perot replied. "I'm going
to break it off." The campaign had brutalized him. To wage the
flat-out drive necessary to give him a shot at winning would
demand more money and emotional energy than Perot chose to
spend. The main question was how to explain it, particularly to
the hundreds of thousands of volunteers who had invested their
own sweat -- and in some cases cash -- getting Perot's name on
state ballots by means of petition drives.

    In his Thursday morning announcement, Perot said that
because "the Democratic Party has revitalized itself," he no
longer could hope for a clear victory in November. Thus the
election would be decided in the House of Representatives. That,
he said, "would be disruptive to the country." Anyway, he
continued, the outpouring of volunteer support for his candidacy
had already accomplished its mission. The major-party candidates
"are basically focused totally on the things that so concerned"
voters demanding change.

    In fact, the Perot camp had realized for weeks that a
three-way race could push the decision into the House and
discussed that possibility. Further, Bill Clinton's pitch and
program today differ only in nuance from what he and some of the
other Democrats were saying as early as January, before Perot
promised to wage "a world-class campaign" if volunteers
succeeded in their petition drives.

    He made a more revealing comment when asked at his press
conference what had gone through his mind the last day. "I'm an
engineer. I just rationally looked at the facts . . . You don't
make good decisions with emotions." Like the good businessman
he is, Perot calculated the cost-benefit ratio and found the
bottom line wanting. His mind-set is different from that of a
seasoned politician, who knows campaigns often encounter
ambushes and that persistence under attack is a cardinal virtue.
A disillusioned Perot worker in San Francisco, Ivan Sharpe,
said, "He probably doesn't deserve the presidency. Every
presidential candidate has to run the press gauntlet. It's a way
of testing them." Sharpe's bitterness was widely shared. In a
TIME/CNN poll taken after Perot's pullout, 62% of his
supporters felt he had let them down, and only 17% believed he
had told the real reasons for quitting. But those familiar with
the Perot biography should not have been totally surprised.
Perot has a history of cutting his losses when a situation no
longer pleases him. He sought an early release from the Navy.
When the sale of his company, Electronic Data Systems, to
General Motors failed to give him the role he sought, he left.

    Yet last week, in a confusing tease, he did not totally
abandon the effort he had launched with his hyperactive mouth.
In a dozen states where petitions are still circulating, he
urged his volunteers to continue to work. In New York, by
coincidence, the process started the same day of Perot's
announcement. "We're moving ahead as if the press conference
hadn't occurred," said Ida Lewis, the committee's spokeswoman.
In Rochester, where the Perot movement has been particularly
strong, its steering committee voted to organize a
letter-writing campaign urging Perot to resume his campaign.
Said county chairman Chris Sardone: "I'm not sure what Mr. Perot
is telling us."

    Because many of his centurions shared that uncertainty,
Perot went on the Larry King Live show Friday night to urge them
to "stay the course as a united team." To what end? Perot
sketched a vague but grandiose scenario in which his movement
would exert "enormous leverage" not only on the presidential
candidates but on nominees for Congress as well. If those
candidates fail to toe a line Perot has yet to define, his
followers would exact retribution at the polls.

    Talk of converting the movement into a durable third-party
effort had already cropped up in a few local organizations. And
if some activists felt betrayed by his noncandidacy, many Perot
supporters still seemed intrigued. The latest TIME/CNN poll
found that 23% of registered voters would still pull the Perot
lever if he remained on the ballot in their states.

    When asked to choose only between George Bush and Bill
Clinton, those who had been for Perot favor the Democrat by a
2-to-1 ratio. But that finding is probably ephemeral. The
Democrats' convention gave the Clinton-Gore ticket a large
boost. Polling numbers measuring the head-to-head contest will
not take on real significance again until after the Republican
National Convention in August.

    By that time, most of those who have supported Perot may
have migrated to Bush or Clinton. But the testy Texan may still
be more than a footnote in political history. If nothing else,
he provided a showcase in which voters could display their
discontent with the status quo. Even last week, with Clinton
bathed in favorable attention, the dyspepsia was strong. In the
TIME/CNN poll, 55% of all the voters -- and 76% of Perot's fans
-- said they were dissatisfied with the field. That, along with
many indicators, demonstrated that 1992 could have been a magic
year for an independent candidate. But to have had a shot, that
rebel would have needed more resilience than Ross Perot
possesses.