Time - Man of the Year/Time_Man_of_the_Year_Compact_Publishing_3YX-Disc-1_Compact_Publishing_1993.iso/moy/111692/11169914.000

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                                                                                COVER STORIES, Page 69

ELECTION `92

The Lessons of Perot


Big bucks and simple talk turned out to be no substitute for
a thick skin and a well-rounded political agenda

By STANLEY W. CLOUD/WASHINGTON -- With reporting by Richard
Woodbury with Perot


    Election '92 may have been God's way of telling Ross
Perot he had too much money, but the diminutive Texan with the
big ears and the bar charts did win a serious, double-digit
share of the vote. The effort cost him more than $60 million --
enough to give even a billionaire pause -- and he failed to
carry a single state. Yet along the way, Perot helped focus and
energize the race, and provided lessons for future independent
candidates, possibly including himself:


    1. Money isn't everything. The fact that Perot's candidacy
was almost entirely self-financed allowed him to claim he was
"owned" by no one but his followers. It turned out there just
weren't enough of them to bring him even close to the victory
he kept promising. If he had been just another computer salesman
from Dallas with a 1930s haircut and a nasal twang, he probably
would never have got his name on the ballot, let alone been
admitted to the inner circle of candidates. His money -- plus
his record as a can-do entrepreneur -- gained him that much. But
it's doubtful, given who Perot is and how he chose to run, that
any amount of money could have bought him the presidency in
1992.


    2. There are no short-cuts. Perot seemed to think all he
had to do to win the White House was to grant an occasional
interview to Larry King, tape a few commercials and deliver a
handful of speeches to captive audiences. To become President,
a candidate has to be willing to sweat, to get out of the TV
studios and into the streets, to run the entire, terrible
gauntlet that presidential campaigns have become. The system by
which Americans choose their Presidents may seem irrational and
demeaning, with its emphasis on TV and trivia, but no one has
yet figured out how to improve on it in this age of weakened
political parties. By trying to short-circuit the process, Perot
gave the impression that he wasn't really serious.


    3. Don't whine. Perot had never before been exposed to the
kind of scrutiny that comes with a presidential campaign. By
repeatedly charging, without evidence, that Republican dirty
tricksters were hatching foul plots against him, he diverted
attention from the issues he claimed to want to discuss. His
bizarre resurrection of an old story about how the North
Vietnamese and the Black Panthers had conspired to kill him back
in the '70s also disrupted his campaign, even as it caused
people to wonder about his stability. Perot urged the press to
check into the behavior of his opponents, but he became petulant
when reporters examined his own conduct -- such as his penchant
for investigating others and his decision to blow up a protected
reef near his Bermuda home. By showing that he couldn't take the
heat, Perot convinced most voters that he didn't belong in the
kitchen.


    4. Issues matter. Perot spent much of his time blasting
his rivals for avoiding the issues, but never fully described
his own proposals. In most cases, he insisted that Washington
was already littered with good plans; it was just a matter of
picking the best ones. When pressed on such matters as
health-care reform, he became hopelessly vague. "Only the
people, the owners of this country, can make America strong
again," he said, ignoring the need for skillful political
leadership. Perot's one truly specific proposal, a
deficit-reduction plan, did call for new taxes on gasoline,
cigarettes and some Social Security benefits and Medicare
programs. But by thus limiting himself, he became the kind of
one-issue candidate Americans have traditionally rejected.
Moreover, he didn't explain how he would get his
belt-tightening package past Congress, except to promise to
build support for it in electronic "town meetings" -- the
Massachusetts Bay Colony comes to the media age.


    5. Running mates count. Retired vice admiral and former
Vietnam POW James Stockdale is a bona fide hero and scholar.
What he is not is someone who should be a heartbeat away from
the presidency. After his hapless performance in the
vice-presidential debate, Stockdale was barely heard from again.
That was a blessing. A vice-presidential candidate ought to have
at least a nodding acquaintance with the issues voters care
about. By choosing Stockdale, Perot did what George Bush
couldn't do: make voters forget their qualms about Dan Quayle.

    Despite his shortcomings as a candidate, Perot could take
some satisfaction from his first plunge into electoral
politics. He demonstrated that Americans are hungry for
leadership rooted in common sense and plain speaking. He was on
the mark when he said, "If anyone wants to know who's to blame
for the $4 trillion debt, just go look in the mirror." Voters
did not recoil from such lines. On the contrary, Perot's
experience suggests that Clinton and Bush missed an opportunity
to use similar outspokenness in order to develop a mandate for
bullet-biting reform.

    Some experts are writing Perot off as a future political
force. Political scientist Nelson Polsby of the University of
California, Berkeley, says the Perot campaign was nothing more
than "an ego trip by a very superficial person." Another
political scientist, Earl Black of the University of South
Carolina, agrees. "Perot," says Black, "was just an extremely
wealthy individual with high visibility who was using his
personality and charisma to fuel this movement."

    There is strong evidence, however, that Americans remain
frustrated by what they see as the failure of the two-party
system to attend to their needs. Democratic political consultant
Greg Schneiders, a former aide to Jimmy Carter, predicts that
"the high level of unrest and unhappiness, which Perot
capitalized on, won't go away. The right candidate in the right
year could come along and perhaps tap into that, even to the
point of getting himself elected." But it would take someone,
Schneiders adds, "with all of Perot's strengths and none of his
weaknesses."

    "Time is short," wrote Perot in his book United We Stand.
"History is merciless." He meant the words to rally the voters
to his banner. They didn't rally. But the words will serve as
a warning to Democrats and Republicans alike that they had
better begin to solve some of the nation's critical problems.
Otherwise, they may be hearing from Ross Perot -- or his like
-- again.