Ross Perot is why we have politics. He is a living, preening argument for political parties and the New Hampshire primary and all the much-maligned foofaraw the pedagogue class complains about every election season.
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The millions of Americans who were drawn to this moneyed popinjay last spring have dwindled down to a spoiled and self-important few, a bovine collection of paid and unpaid volunteers who comport themselves like 4th graders, alternately giggling and sobbing whenever Boss Ross offers a pronunciamento.
No matter. In a triumph of ego and money, Perot returned last Thursday, answering his own call.
According to a Gallup Poll commissioned by CNN, the cable network that has adopted Perot as a kind of on-air mascot, the Texan is drawing just 7 percent of the vote in a three-way race against President Bush and Democrat Bill Clinton.
The same survey reports that that seven of 10 potential voters asked said there is ”no chance” they would cast a ballot for Perot. Given the same option, 48 percent of those asked said they would never vote for Bush, and 32 percent said they would never vote for Clinton.
Perot can do what he wants, but this is all about money, about a capricious businessman who has persuaded a narrow corner of the electorate-and a big slice of the news media-that he is a serious candidate for the presidency.
If Perot didn`t have a vast personal fortune, he wouldn`t have been able to write the $18 million in checks ($7 million since he quit the race July 16) that he needed to keep 64 offices up and running across the country.
He wouldn`t have been able to slide salary and consultant fees to a number of his volunteer state coordinators, about half of whom, according to CBS News, signed on after Perot had his first change of heart last summer.
Perot understands that his vast wealth helps insulate him from questions about his financial background, his personal life and his propensity for speaking before he`s finished thinking.
”I will not spend one minute answering questions that are not directly relevant to the issues that concern the American people,” he said in his re- entry speech.
That means that having successfully evaded the heart of the electoral process-he still has yet to receive his first real vote-Perot will evade all questions about his penchant for hiring private investigators and decline the chance to discuss how he amassed a $3 billion fortune.
This manifesto, he intoned, was being handed down to reflect the wishes of his followers, a robotic group of true believers who are flown in and out of Dallas at the whim and expense of the Great Man whenever he needs a grass- rootsy backdrop.
Beyond that, the money allows Perot to wage an electronic and largely uncontested media campaign. Supplying the questions along with the answers, the candidate will flood national TV markets with the ads his Dallas-based media consultant has said are ready to go.
Charles Black, a senior aide to the Bush campaign, had only one question when asked how Perot would fare in November: ”Tell me how much money he`s going to spend.”
One year ago yesterday, the governor of Arkansas stood outside the Old State House in Little Rock and said he wanted to be president.
Few outside the Democratic Party establishment knew Clinton, and most of what was known about him was linked to an embarrassing nominating speech for Michael Dukakis at the 1988 Democratic National Convention.
Clinton made his way through more than 30 primaries, winning most of them and pushing a half-dozen Democratic rivals out of the race. He has, to this point, survived questions about his marriage and doubts about his conduct during the Vietnam era. He appears to have united a once-skeptical party behind him.
Bush, an incumbent president who won a war, faced a bitter primary challenge from a right-wing TV commentator in the primaries and is about the business of trying to get himself re-elected.
He is taking his case to an electorate that is angry and worried about the economy, but he is not hiding behind an imaginary army of supporters, nor is he pretending that he is motivated by some higher purpose.
Bush and Clinton may be imperfect vessels, and they are surely bound up in an imperfect political system. But you know where to find them. You know they`re in for the long haul. It may not be much, but the Perot alternative is disquieting indeed.
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