The can-do noncandidate is out of the race, back to can-doing with endeavors with which he is more comfortable. The professionals can relax. For now, their jobs look safe and their status assured.
They said he was a dictator, albeit a benevolent one, who they feared would come and, in his apt phrase, ”clean out the barn” that passes itself off as modern-day American government.
They pronounced him guilty of naivete, not quite ready for the prime time, a bit on the simple side. He lacked the smooth edge and the
sophisticated answer. He stood for but one thing: action.
He scared them. Texas zillionaires might be able to throw their weight around in the business world, but they cannot be successful at presidential politics if they refuse to dress themselves in the slickness required in modern campaigns.
His withdrawal confirmed to them that roughed-edged outsiders with no experience at fending off the slings and arrows of political attack or smoking the peace-pipe of compromise do not stand a chance at running for high office. Politics is the art of the possible, they say. It is a careful balancing and blending of economic and social interests that are written into law and added to appropriations bills. Bit by bit, year after year, these interests have created a mountain of law and spending.
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By and large, this activity should be constructive for American citizens. Indeed, to many it is. But not to all. Over the years, the demands on the federal budget created by this old-fashioned system of taking care of large constituencies have grown into a massive, unsustainable deficit.
This would be can-do government, too, but of a different kind. The art of the possible has become the art of self-destruction. All this spunky little outsider wanted to do is to take what had become possible over the past few decades, turn it upside down and give it a good hard shake.
He would turn around what so many professionals worked hard to achieve. He would have pushed a society desperately trying to avoid choices into making a few key taxing and spending decisions.
His economic program, on the verge of being announced before he decided to quit the race, would have stunned many of these special interests. Social Security, the most sacred of sacred cows, would have been cut with a ceiling on cost-of-living allowances. (There, presumably, went Florida.)
He would have slashed farm subsidies (there went the Midwest) and raised the federal gasoline tax by 50 cents a gallon (there went most of the West). He would have put a ceiling on mortgage interest, which would surely frighten every homeowner in every region of the country. He would have balanced the budget in five years.
This sounds radical, threatening. Neither George Bush nor Bill Clinton, who pass themselves off as ”change agents,” would have gone this far, and for good reason. In modern campaigns, the worst names you could call anyone are ”tax raiser” and ”Social Security cutter.”
In truth, his program isn`t so radical considering the economic threat to the nation. The Social Security cost-of-living allowance trims are modest for a program running amok. A gasoline tax increase is just what the economic doctor ordered for a country that wastes too much energy.
It was thought he was going to develop his program through a series of electronic town hall meetings, proposing only after listening to all the special-interest demands. To his credit, he did not wait.
But he dropped out before he could announce it, saying he could not win outright. Many of his followers shouted betrayal, and rightly so. Many political analysts give him great credit for having the fortitude to raise the budget deficit as a key campaign issue.
This is so much nonsense. Without him in the race, Bush and Clinton, and their handlers, will tend to marginalize the deficit again. Clinton would only cut it in half after five years, for example. Bush claims his plan would balance the budget, but only after assuming unsustainable economic growth.
Ross Perot, the superpatriot, has let his country down. He was the first candidate for president to sound the real alarm of the deficit and promise strong action.
The scary thing for the professionals was that his rhetoric attracted a huge following. Indeed, there was a real chance that his economic plan, once revealed, could have been more widely accepted than believed.
By inflicting a little bit of pain on everyone, it followed the true precepts of democracy: Share the sacrifice in order to save our children. For this idea, we have fought wars. It might have played very well with a frightened country.
This the professionals knew and appreciated. They were tickled and relieved when Perot called it a halt. Now, they are back in control, and it probably will take a crisis to resolve the budget problem.
The eagle has landed, a threat no more.