Ross Perot-for the people or for himself?, and how he gave Clinton the victory, but why? Options

[graham4anything]

http://www.realchange.org/perot.htm

H. Ross Perot's Skeleton Closet

Click on the allegation of your choice:


Character -- - Hypocrite Got Rich Off Exorbitant Government Contracts -- -- Authoritarian, controlling personality -- -- Government Insider: Payoffs and Favors -- -- How "crazy" is he? What does that mean? -- -- Abuses his employees -- -- The Iran Rescue: bragging about a fiasco -- -- Ruthless -- -- Quotes -- -- A Deal with Clinton? Feud With Bush? -- -- Palindromes -- -- Sources
Character:
Ross Perot has a very distinct personality with three consistent qualities: an absolute conviction that he is morally right; an intense will that refuses to consider the possibility that he could be wrong, or could lose a fair fight; and a need to control every situation to fit these parameters. These are his strengths and his weaknesses. They give him the independence and courage to envision huge endeavours and make them happen. They have made him a billionaire and one of the very few businessmen or women to make a splash in politics. (Heard anything about Lee Iacocca lately?)
But these traits are so intense that they literally threaten his sanity. He refuses to admit wrongness or fair defeat, and if he can't change reality in the broader world, he seems to need to change it in the press -- or in his own mind. Ross Perot is truly a great man, that is a man of great strengths and great, crippling flaws that he is unable to acknowledge, much less cure. This man has already enjoyed tremendous power in his life; were he to achieve his goal of becoming president, as was very possible in 1992, he would surely become a heroic failure to rival anyone in Shakespeare or the Greek tragedies.

If you really want to understand Perot as a person -- good, bad and weird -- get the superb new biography "Citizen Perot" by Gerald Posner. It's at bookstores and libraries everywhere. This book is everything we aim to achieve -- detailed, well researched, fair, original and tough. Much of our information comes from that book anyway. So help Posner make some money and buy his book, his certainly earned it.


Quotes
"If he thinks he is right, that's all that matters." -- Ross Perot, Jr. (Posner, p128).
"I'm not going to get into that with you because it's none of your business. I'm not going to -- hey, look, I don't have anything to prove to you people to start with." -- Perot, answering questions about the Black Panther/N. Vietnamese hit squads (Posner, p66)


Hypocrite: Got Rich Off Exorbitant Government Contracts
Perot got rich off government money -- Medicare and Medicaid, to be exact, two of the programs contributing the most to the deficit he talks about so much.
How much does his company (EDS) make off the government? Consider this; in 1980, EDS won a contract that paid over $390 million per year for administering Medicare -- just in Texas! That's not the cost of the actual health care -- it's purely administrative expense for doing the paperwork. Medicaid is separate, and EDS has similar contracts with states around the country -- using software that they charged the federal government for developing, but kept the rights to.

EDS barely turned a profit before it began government work. In 1964, its fourth year, the company made $4,100 on revenue of $400,000. In 1965, when it started government work, that rose to just $26,487 on revenues of $865,000. By 1968, EDS grossed $7.5 million, and made a profit of $2.4 MILLION - nearly 30% profit.

Ever since, the company has faced critical audits, congressional investigations, and charges of poor quality work and exorbitant fees. But they built a dominant position in a new industry by investing heavily in political connections, notably with the Nixon Administration, and by personal contacts (Perot himself was a consultant for EDS' first Medicare client, Texas Blue Cross.) They have maintained profits from government work with their near-monopoly power and, in part, with vicious, sleazy attacks on any potential competitors. (See Posner, chapter 4, "Welfare Billionaire")

Authoritarian Personality
Perot's need to control shows up in many aspects of his life. The most recent and political one is his Reform Party's convention. He tricked Dick Lamm into running against him, knowing he needed Reform to seem like a real, open party rather than his personal tool. But when Lamm took him seriously, Perot pulled every string to make sure Lamm lost, denying Lamm the party mailing list among other things. Many Lamm supporters never received their mail-in ballots, in fact.
Perot's 1992 organization, United We Stand America, wasn't much better. There was a large, genuine surge of dedicated volunteers who joined that organization. Perot fired anyone who got too independent, leaving a large number of alienated ex-supporters, and several lawsuits. There was even a convention of dissatisfied ex-United We Stand supporters this year.

But his need for control extends to even his loved ones. Perot had private investigators check out his daughter's boyfriends, for example. (Posner, p95).


Abusing His Employees
Perot is by all accounts a great motivator, a man who demands great loyalty and extreme hard work from employees, but also can repay it with striking acts of generosity (though rarely much in the way of wages.) He has done things like fly a new employee's wife to Johns Hopkins Hospital in his Lear Jet, after she injured her eye.
At the same time, the relationship he creates is one where Perot is all-powerful, and bestows his generosities from on high. He works people extremely hard for little money, and subjects them to instrusive scrutiny, including private investigators, wiretaps, drug tests and lie detector tests.

In this regard, he bears a striking resemblance to Ralph Nader, of all people, who also inspires great loyalty, pushes himself at least as hard as he pushes his employees, burns people out for little money, and seems to feel he has a right to monitor and control their lives.

For example, discussing salaries has been an immediate firing offense from the first days at EDS, Perot's company. The company dress code, up into the 1970s, required white shirts only for men (he considered blue shirts effeminate), no pants or flats for women, and no "mod looks," as the contract put it. But the intrusion went much further.

EDS tapped phones and used detectives to investigate its own employees, according to Posner. He traced license plate numbers in the parking lot to see who came late or left early, just as Nader telephones employees at home on sunny weekends to test how long they work. And in "particularly heated" fights for contracts, employees on the bid team would be physically searched to ensure they did not remove any paperwork that could assist the opposition. (Posner, p94-5)

The Iran Rescue: Bragging about a fiasco
under construction

How "Crazy" is he?
Comedians and Perot's critics routinely brand him as "crazy", and Ross himself acknowledged the charges, rather gracefully, by dancing with his wife to the tune of Patsy Cline's song "Crazy" in the last election. It's such a broad term as to mean nothing; no one is saying he belongs in a mental institution.
So IS he crazy? And what does that mean? None of us are psychiatrists, but a close look at Perot shows four traits that do in fact alienate him from reality. He is obsessive, delusional, paranoid and never wrong (in his own mind.) Like many conspiracy fans, he can explain away any unpleasant facts with "secret information" or conspiracies by his enemies.

His

obsessiveness
is evident in his focus on American POWs and MIAs from the Vietnam War. He became concerned about them in the late 1960s, as a sincere and fervent supporter of the Vietnam War. He led a quixotic mission with food and other goods for American POWs in North Vietnam, which failed due to opposition from that country, Moscow and even Washington (after Perot refused to go along with Nixon Administration PR goals.) Fair enough.
But Perot has remained convinced ever since that large numbers of POWs are being hidden in Asia, despite massive evidence to the contrary. (In fact, there is strong evidence that most of the MIAs weren't even missing; they were shot down while flying illegal missions over Cambodia, Laos, etc. and the government called them MIAs rather than admit the missions.)

The Reagan Administration even gave him access to top secret classified documents in an attempt to answer his relentless criticism of them for not bringing the MIAs back, but Perot only saw what he wanted to, and remains unconvinced. In fact, this was the origin of his feud with George Bush; as VP Bush drew the unpleasant job of telling Perot they were cutting off his top secret clearance, and Perot typically started a no-holds-barred feud with Bush, which in part led to Bill Clinton's election.


Delusional
One of Ross' most dangerous traits is his unwillingness to admit facts he doesn't want to believe. If someone does this in an argument, but they know they are not right, we call them a liar. Ross does not seem to be a liar, though he says untruths. Instead, he refuses to believe the information he doesn't like. He changes his perception, not the reality, and this is the most "crazy" of his well known traits.
His own son, Ross Jr., says "If he thinks he is right, that's all that matters." (Posner, p128). There are many examples. Perot has his company's headquarter's grass spray-painted green during Dallas' dry spells. (p91) When some employees who had won the company's "Recruiter of the Year" award left EDS, Perot wanted to erase their names from the engraved plaque.

EDS briefly lost their biggest contract to a competitor, Bradford, at one point. Perot told his board "They are crooks! They bribed someone and we will find out who!" EDS's president, Mort Myerson, replied "I know one of their executive vice-presidents, and it's on the up and up." Perot's response was "That's the kind of soft-headed thinking that makes EDS lose business." (The company won the contract back with an effort combining political pressure, lawsuits, and an attack team that followed Bradford executives and the state officials who awarded the contract, dug up dirt on them, videotaped some Bradford officials with prostitutes, etc.) (Posner, p127-138).



Paranoia
Perot's paranoia is pretty well known, due to his announcement in 1992 that he was quitting the presidential race (in which he was a very strong contender) because Republican's were planning to disrupt his daughters wedding (by forging photos of phony lesbian sex.) But it has long been typical of him.
He thinks he lost his 1993 debate to Al Gore because Gore had a hidden earpiece, through which he was being fed answers, or possibly questions. (Posner, p330). While he was serving on a Texas anti-drug commission in the early 1980s, he became convinced that Charles Harrelson (the father of actor Woody Harrelson, from "Cheers") had been hired to kill him by drug dealers. (The elder Harrelson is in fact a career criminal doing time for killing a federal judge.) The FBI dismissed his fears as baseless.

In 1992, Perot claimed that the North Vietnamese government had hired the Black Panthers to assasinate him, back in 1970, because of his efforts on behalf of POWs. He even said that "one night they had five people coming across my front lawn with rifles", and that a guard dog bit a big piece out of one attacker's butt.

However, Harold Birkhead, the man who ran security (including the dogs) at Perot's house at the time, says he never saw or heard about anything like that. And Paul McCaghren, who headed Dallas police intelligence in 1970, also dismisses the notion. "... it did not happen. There were only about 8 people here [in Dallas] that belonged to the Black Panther party. Two of those people worked for us, and they told us every day what was happening." (Posner, p66)

Just before Perot's 1993 debate with Gore, he announced that the FBI had alerted him that a six-member Cuban hit squad had been sent to murder him. "The organization is a Mafia-like group in favor of the North American Free Trade Agreement", Perot claimed. (Posner, p327-8) The FBI had told him about an anonymous tip that he would be assassinated, but public figures get weird threat calls all the time. What is striking is that Perot believed the claim, embellished it and announced it publicly.


He's Never Wrong (in his own mind.)
Obnoxious, superior moralizing has long been a part of Ross Perot's dealings with other people, especially with religion, drinking and sex. This goes back all the way to his Navy stint, which he tried to get out of because he was schocked that there were godless, hard-drinking, carousing men on his ship.
At the same time, he can't acknowledge his own dark side. He can be ruthless when fighting his enemies, and his horror at other men's human failings is more than tactical. A private investigator who worked for him says "Perot loved to collect information, those personal facts of a perverse nature. Perot was titillated by it." (Posner, p95)

And yet, he can't even acknowledge his own self-interest. To hear him tell it, his motives are always pure. He never takes a job or, for example, runs for President because it might help him. He is always asked, even begged by people who need him, and graciously agrees to help. This is how he describes everything from his first job for IBM to his 1992 campaign.


Ruthless
under construction

Government Insider: Payoffs and Favors
Getting rich off of Medicare and Medicaid is not the only political benefit Ross has received from politicians he donated to. He milked the Nixon Administration for everything from meetings with Nixon himself, and getting his mother into a White House prayer breakfast, to having the Social Security Administration drop investigations and release disputed money to EDS ($400,000 in one case).
In return, Perot gave lots of money to Nixon, lent him computer expertise and assigned employees to work on his campaign. When the IRS investigated the last part, because Perot deducted their salaries as a business expense, Nixon officials intervened and helped him out. (p52, Posner)

One particular case involved a bunch of federally owned land, on the shore of a public lake, that Perot rented for $110 per year to graze his horses on. The lease was set to expire, especially since Perot violated several terms (e.g. by blocking public access to the lakeshore.) The White House put on heavy pressured. John Ehrlichman said he had "carefully reviewed the facts" and it was "most difficult for me to understand" why the lease should not be renewed.

Another Nixon aide, Tom Cole, was more blunt in a memo dated April 9, 1969. "H.R. Perot of Dallas, Texas was the most substantial Nixon backer in 1968. Besides outright financial contributions, a number of Perot employees' time was donated to the campaign. ... Perot is extremely interested in having this lease approved. I leave the matter in your good hands." The lease was renewed. (Posner, p56)

Ironically, by 1972 Nixon officials had written Perot off as a blowhard who promised lots of money but never delivered. A memo details his reneging: a $50 million publicity campaign on TV, $10 million for a pro-Nixon think tank, $500,000 for the National Center for Volunteer Action, and $250,000 for the 1970 Congressional elections.

One thing he did deliver on was money for a different publicity campaign supporting the Vietnam War, in November 1969. The campaign was timed to follow Nixon's "Vietnamization" speech on November 3rd, and create the impression of a spontaneous wave of public support. Perot paid for a big newspaper campaign and a TV special starring astronaut Frank Borman. Nixon aides William Safire and Alexander Butterfield edited the scripts that Perot's team wrote. Perot created an organization to collect contributions and build a mailing list: he called it "United We Stand." (In 1992, he called his organization "United We Stand America.") (Posner, p52-72)

Palindromes:
under construction

Deal With Clinton, a Feud With Bush, or Both?
There is one allegation against Perot that we DON'T believe. We have received several emails from Republicans convinced that Perot has a direct deal with Clinton, usually one where Perot gets federal contract money in return for helping Bill. I don't believe it. Perot got rich in the 1960s and 1970s from contracts he received from the Nixon Administration, which he supported heavily. Perot doesn't need Clinton for wealth, and hasn't hesitated to attack the President on NAFTA or (just recently) ethics -- in fact he's hitting Clinton a lot harder than Dole is.
Clearly Perot helped Clinton win in 1992, but evidence points to a different reason: hatred of George Bush, over the POW/MIA issue.


Sources:
"Citizen Perot: His Life and Times", Gerald Posner (Random House: NY) 1996 ISBN 0-679-44731-8 FANTASTIC book -- buy it!

BACK TO SKELETON CLOSET


Copyright 1999 Real People For Real Change

[graham4anything]

and interesting how in 2000, Ross endorsed George W. Bush.

3rd party independent, or ulterior motives and reasons

it sure wasn't the average Joe he ever cared about

[graham4anything]

from the above

How much does his company (EDS) make off the government? Consider this; in 1980, EDS won a contract that paid over $390 million per year for administering Medicare -- just in Texas! That's not the cost of the actual health care -- it's purely administrative expense for doing the paperwork. Medicaid is separate, and EDS has similar contracts with states around the country -- using software that they charged the federal government for developing, but kept the rights to.

[graham4anything]

this paragraph from the above is so true and applicable to today in that most of the "other" candidates also don't want anyone but themselves

Perot's 1992 organization, United We Stand America, wasn't much better. There was a large, genuine surge of dedicated volunteers who joined that organization. Perot fired anyone who got too independent, leaving a large number of alienated ex-supporters, and several lawsuits. There was even a convention of dissatisfied ex-United We Stand supporters this year.

[txbluejay]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Perot

Ross Perot
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Henry Ross Perot

Perot at the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, 2008
Born June 27, 1930 (1930-06-27) (age 79)
Texarkana, Texas, USA
Education Texarkana Junior College
United States Naval Academy
Occupation Businessman
Net worth US$5.9 billion
Political party Independent
Reform
Spouse(s) Margot Birmingham
Children H. Ross, Jr., Nancy, Suzanne, Carolyn, and Katherine
Henry Ross Perot (born June 27, 1930) is an American businessman from Texas best known for running for President of the United States in 1992 and 1996. Perot founded Electronic Data Systems (EDS) in 1962, sold the company to General Motors in 1984 and founded Perot Systems in 1988. Perot Systems was bought by Dell for $3.9 billion in 2009. He was born in Texarkana, Texas.[1]

With an estimated net worth of around US$5 billion in 2008, he is ranked by Forbes as the 68th-richest person in America.

Contents [hide]
1 Early life
2 Business
3 Early political activities
4 1992 presidential candidacy
5 Reform Party and 1996 presidential run
6 Later activities
7 Family
8 Honors
9 Electoral history
10 References
11 Further reading
12 External links


[edit] Early life
Perot was born in Texarkana, Texas, to Luly Maye Perot (née Ray) and Gabriel Ross Perot.[2] His father was a cotton broker.[3] He attended a private school called Patty Hill. The family went to church every Sunday. He graduated from Texas High School in Texarkana in 1947.[4]

Perot joined the Boy Scouts of America and made Eagle Scout in 1942, after only 13 months in the program. He is a recipient of the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award.[5][6]

Perot entered the United States Naval Academy in 1949 and helped establish its honor system.[5] By the time he graduated in 1953 he was president of his class and battalion commander. By late 1954, Perot was made a lieutenant, junior grade. However, in 1955, Perot expressed some discontent with his life in the United States Navy in a letter to his father. He quietly served the remainder of his four-year commitment and resigned his commission.

Perot married Margot Birmingham of Greensburg, Pennsylvania, in 1956.

[edit] Business
After he left the Navy in 1957, Perot became a salesman for International Business Machines (IBM). He quickly became a top employee, filling his year's sales quota in two weeks[7], and tried to pitch his ideas to supervisors who largely ignored him. He left IBM in 1962 to found Electronic Data Systems (EDS) in Dallas, Texas, and courted large corporations for his data processing services. Perot was refused 77 times before he got his first contract. EDS received lucrative contracts from the U.S. government in the 1960s, computerizing Medicare records. EDS went public in 1968 and the stock price shot up from $16 a share to $160 within days. Fortune called Perot the "fastest, richest Texan" in a 1968 cover story. In 1984 General Motors bought controlling interest in EDS for $2.4 billion.

In 1974 Perot gained some press attention for being "the biggest individual loser ever on the New York Stock Exchange" when his EDS shares dropped $450 million in value in a single day in April 1970.[8]

Just prior to the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the government of Iran imprisoned two EDS employees in a contract dispute. Perot organized and sponsored their rescue. The rescue team was led by retired U.S. Army Special Forces Colonel Arthur D. ('Bull') Simons. When the team couldn't find a way to extract their two prisoners, they decided to wait for a mob of pro-Ayatollah revolutionaries to storm the jail and free all 10,000 inmates, many of whom were political prisoners. The two prisoners then connected with the rescue team, and the team spirited them out of Iran via a risky border crossing into Turkey. The exploit was recounted in a book, On Wings of Eagles by Ken Follett, which became a best-seller. In the 1986 miniseries, Perot was portrayed by Richard Crenna.

In 1984 Perot bought a very early copy of the Magna Carta, one of only a few to leave the United Kingdom. It was lent to the National Archives in Washington, D.C., where it was displayed alongside the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution. On September 25, 2007, The New York Times reported that the Perot Foundation had terminated the loan and that Sotheby's would auction off the document in December 2007.[9] The document sold for $21.3 million USD on December 18, 2007.

Ross Perot put up the majority of the venture capital for Steve Jobs's NeXT computer project in 1986.[citation needed] That same year, after Perot strongly criticized General Motors, the corporation bought out Perot's remaining shares in EDS for $700 million.[citation needed] In 1988 he founded Perot Systems Corporation, Inc. in Plano, Texas. His son, H. Ross Perot, Jr., eventually succeeded him as CEO. Today, Perot Sr. serves as Chairman Emeritus, and Perot Jr. serves as Chairman. In September 2009, Dell announced the acquisition of Perot Systems for $3.9 billion[10].

[edit] Early political activities
In the same year that Perot organized the rescue mission in Iran, Texas governor Bill Clements requested his assistance developing policy to reduce illegal drug use. Perot led the Texas War on Drugs Committee that proposed five laws, all of which were passed by the legislature.

In 1983 he was called upon by Democratic Governor Mark White to help improve the quality of the state's public education, and ended up leading the effort ("Select Committee on Public Education") to reform the school system, which resulted in major legislative changes. The best known of Perot's proposals which were passed into law was the "No Pass, No Play" rule, under which it was required that students have passing grades in order to participate in any school-sponsored extracurricular activities. The intent was to prevent high school sports from being the focus of the school's funding, and to emphasize the importance of education for the students who participated in sports. Another key reform measure was a call for teacher competency testing, which was strongly opposed by the teachers unions in Texas.

Perot became heavily involved in the Vietnam War POW/MIA issue. He believed that hundreds of American servicemen were left behind in Southeast Asia at the end of the U.S. involvement in the war,[11] and that government officials were covering up POW/MIA investigations in order to not reveal a drug smuggling operation used to finance a secret war in Laos.[12] Perot engaged in unauthorized back-channel discussions with Vietnamese officials in the late 1980s, which led to fractured relations between Perot and the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations.[11][12] In 1990, Perot reached agreement with Vietnam's Foreign Ministry to become its business agent in the event diplomatic relations were normalized.[13] Perot also launched private investigations of, and attacks upon, U.S. Department of Defense official Richard Armitage.[11][12]

Beginning in the late 1980s and continuing in the early 1990s Ross Perot began speaking out about what he described as the failings of the United States government. Perot asserted that the United States "had grown arrogant and complacent after the War (World War II)" and was no longer the world's greatest nation. Instead of looking into what was to come, he argued, America was "daydreaming of our past while the rest of the world was building its future." He said:

Go to Rome, go to Paris, go to London. Those cities are centuries old. They're thriving. They're clean. They work. Our oldest cities are brand new compared to them and yet… go to New York, drive through downtown Washington, go to Detroit, go to Philadelphia. What's wrong with us?
In Florida in 1990, retired financial planner Jack Gargan funded a series of "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore" (a reference to a famous quotation from the 1976 political and mass media satire movie, Network) newspaper advertisements denouncing the U.S. Congress for voting for legislative pay raises at a time when average wages nationwide were not increasing. Gargan later founded "Throw the Hypocritical Rascals Out" (THRO), which Ross Perot supported.

Perot did not support President George H. W. Bush and vigorously opposed the United States involvement in the 1990-1991 Persian Gulf War. He unsuccessfully urged Senators to vote against the war resolution, and began to consider his own Presidential run.

[edit] 1992 presidential candidacy
On February 20, 1992, he appeared on CNN's Larry King Live and announced his intention to run as an independent if his supporters could get his name on the ballot in all 50 states. With such declared policies as balancing the federal budget, firm pro-choice stance, expansion of the war on drugs, ending outsourcing of jobs, support for gun control, belief in protectionism on trade, his support of the Environmental Protection Agency and enacting electronic direct democracy via "electronic town halls," he became a potential candidate and soon polled roughly even with the two major party candidates.

Perot's candidacy received increasing media attention when the competitive phase of the primary season ended for the two major parties. President George H.W. Bush was losing support, and Democratic nominee Bill Clinton was still suffering from the numerous scandal allegations made in the previous months. With the insurgent candidacies of Republican Pat Buchanan and Democrat Jerry Brown winding down, Perot was the natural beneficiary of populist resentment toward establishment politicians. On May 25, 1992 he was featured on the cover of Time Magazine with the title "Waiting for Perot", an allusion to Samuel Beckett's play Waiting for Godot.[14]

With several months to go until the Democratic and Republican conventions, Perot filled the vacuum of election news, as his supporters began petition drives to get him on the ballot in all 50 states. This sense of momentum was reinforced when Perot hired two savvy campaign managers in Democrat Hamilton Jordan and Republican Ed Rollins.

In July, while Perot was pondering whether to run for office, his supporters established a campaign organization United We Stand America. Perot was late in making formal policy proposals, but most of what he did call for were intended to reduce the deficit. He wanted a gasoline tax increase and some cutbacks of Social Security.

On July 11, while attending a NAACP meeting, Perot, in describing the criminality of certain populations, referred to them to the members as "your people", causing a negative reaction.[15]

By the summer Perot commanded a lead in the presidential race with 39 percent of the vote,[16] but on July 16, Perot unexpectedly dropped out.[17] Perot eventually stated the reason was that he received threats that digitally altered photos would be released by the Bush campaign to sabotage his daughter's wedding.[18] Former CIA Operative Gene 'Chip' Tatum later revealed his role in targeting Perot, acting upon orders of the OSG to neutralize Perot.[citation needed] Regardless of the reasons for withdrawing, his reputation was badly damaged. Many of his supporters felt betrayed and public opinion polls would subsequently show a large negative view of Perot that was absent prior to his decision to end the campaign.[19]

In September he qualified for all 50 state ballots. On October 1, he announced his intention to reenter the presidential race. He explained his earlier withdrawal by claiming that Republican operatives had wanted to reveal compromising photos of his daughter, which would disrupt her wedding, and he wanted to spare her from embarrassment. Scott Barnes, a private investigator and security consultant who had testified to that effect, later recanted his story. He revealed in 1997 that he had deceived Perot about the existence of the photos, and that he had created the hoax with others who weren't involved with any political campaign. Barnes was a Perot supporter, and believed if it were revealed that Republicans were involved in dirty tricks, it would harm Bush's candidacy.[20]

He campaigned in 16 states and spent an estimated $65.4 million of his own money. Perot employed the innovative strategy of purchasing half-hour blocks of time on major networks for infomercial-type campaign ads; these ads garnered more viewership than many sitcoms, with one Friday night program in October attracting 10.5 million viewers.[21]

Perot's running mate was retired Vice Admiral James Stockdale, a highly-decorated former Vietnam prisoner of war (POW). In December 1969 he organized and flew to North Vietnam in an attempt to deliver 30 tons of supplies to beleaguered American POWs in North Vietnam. Although North Vietnam blocked the flights, the effort was instrumental in bringing the plight of those POWs to the world's attention and their captors soon began treating them better.[5]

At one point in June, Perot led the polls with 39% (versus 31% for Bush and 25% for Clinton). Just prior to the debates, Perot received 7-9% support in nationwide polls.[22] It is likely that the debates played a significant role in his ultimate receipt of 19% of the popular vote. Although his answers during the debates were often general, many Democrats and Republicans conceded that Perot won at least the first debate. In the debate he remarked: "Keep in mind our Constitution predates the Industrial Revolution. Our founders did not know about electricity, the train, telephones, radio, television, automobiles, airplanes, rockets, nuclear weapons, satellites, or space exploration. There's a lot they didn't know about. It would be interesting to see what kind of document they'd draft today. Just keeping it frozen in time won't hack it."[23]

Perot denounced Congress for its inaction. Perot said:

[Washington, D.C.,] has become a town filled with sound bites, shell games, handlers, media stuntmen who posture, create images, talk, shoot off Roman candles, but don't ever accomplish anything. We need deeds, not words, in this city.[citation needed]
In the 1992 election, he received 18.9% of the popular vote - approximately 19,741,065 votes (but no electoral college votes), making him the most successful third-party presidential candidate in terms of the popular vote since Theodore Roosevelt in the 1912 election. However, unlike Perot, some other third party candidates since Roosevelt have won electoral college votes. (Strom Thurmond had 39 in 1948 and George Wallace had 46 in 1968). Compared with Thurmond and Wallace, who polled very strongly in a small number of states, Perot's vote was more evenly spread across the country. Perot managed to finish second in two states: In Maine, Perot received 30.44% of the vote to Bush's 30.39% (Clinton won Maine with 38.77%); In Utah, Perot received 27.34% of the vote to Clinton's 24.65% (Bush won Utah with 43.36%).

A detailed analysis of voting demographics revealed that Perot's support drew heavily from across the political spectrum, with 20% of his votes coming from self-described liberals, 27% from self-described conservatives, and 53% coming from self-described moderates. Economically, however, the majority of Perot voters (57%) were middle class, earning between $15,000 and $49,000 annually, with the bulk of the remainder drawing from the upper middle class (29% earning over $50,000 annually).[24] Exit polls also showed that Ross Perot drew 38% of his vote from Bush, and 38% of his vote from Clinton, while the rest of his voters would have stayed home had he not been on the ballot[25].

Based on his performance in the popular vote in 1992, Perot was entitled to receive federal election funding for 1996. Perot remained in the public eye after the election and championed opposition to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), urging voters to listen for the "giant sucking sound" of American jobs heading south to Mexico should NAFTA be ratified.

The true impact of his sudden withdrawal from and later reentry into the race will never be fully known. It's possible that he could have won the race.[26]

[edit] Reform Party and 1996 presidential run
Perot tried to keep his movement alive through the mid-1990s, continuing to speak about the increasing national debt. He was a prominent campaigner against the North American Free Trade Agreement, and even debated Al Gore on the issue on Larry King Live, which attracted what was at the time the largest audience for a cable program.[citation needed] Perot's behavior during the debate was a source of mirth thereafter, including his repeated pleas to "let me finish" in his southern drawl. The debate was seen by many as effectively ending Perot’s political career[27]. Support for NAFTA went from 34% to 57%. The following week, NAFTA passed the House, with some hesitant members of Congress saying the Perot debate helped make a vote for the bill more popular.[citation needed] Perot sponsored conferences which were attended by numerous high-profile politicians.

In 1995, he founded the Reform Party and won their nomination for the 1996 election. His running mate was Pat Choate. Because of the ballot access laws he had to run as an Independent on many state ballots. Perot received eight percent of the popular vote in 1996, much less than in the 1992 race but still an unusually successful third-party showing by U.S. standards. He spent much less of his own money in this race than he had four years before, and also allowed other people to contribute to his campaign, unlike his prior race. One common explanation for the decline was Perot's exclusion from the presidential debates, based on the preferences of the Democratic and Republican party candidates (as described by George Farah in Open Debates).

[edit] Later activities

Perot attending the 2009 EagleBank Bowl in Washington, D.C.Later in the 1990s, Perot's detractors accused him of not allowing the Reform Party to develop into a genuine national political party, but rather using it as a vehicle to promote himself. They cited as evidence the control of party offices by operatives from his presidential campaigns. Perot did not give an endorsement during Jesse Ventura's run for governor of Minnesota in the 1998 election, and this became suspicious to detractors when he made fun of Ventura at a conference after Ventura had a fall-out with the press. The party leadership grew in tighter opposition to groups supporting Ventura and Jack Gargan. Evidence of this was demonstrated when Gargan was officially removed as Reform Party Chairman by the Reform Party National Committee.

In the 2000 presidential election, Perot refused to become openly involved with the internal Reform Party dispute between supporters of Pat Buchanan and of John Hagelin. Perot was reportedly unhappy with what he saw as the disintegration of the party, as well as his own portrayal in the press; thus he chose to remain quiet. He appeared on Larry King Live four days before the election and endorsed George W. Bush for President. Despite his earlier opposition to NAFTA, Perot remained largely silent about expanded use of guest worker visas in the United States, with Buchanan supporters attributing this silence to his corporate reliance on foreign workers.[28] Eventually, Perot ended all ties between himself and the Reform Party, which was largely defunct in most states, and has filed a Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) lawsuit against a branch of the Reform Party.[citation needed] Some state parties have affiliated with the new (Buchananite) America First Party; others gave Ralph Nader their ballot lines in the 2004 presidential election.

Since then, Perot has been largely silent on political issues, refusing to answer most questions from the press. When interviewed, he usually remains on the subject of his business career and refuses to answer specific questions on politics, candidates, or his past activities.

The one exception to this came in 2005, when he was asked to testify before the Texas Legislature in support of proposals to extend technology to students, including making laptops available to them; additionally, changing the process of buying textbooks, by making electronic books (ebooks) available and by allowing schools to buy books at the local level instead of going through the state. In an April 2005 interview, Perot expressed concern about the state of progress on issues he had raised in his presidential runs.[29]

In January 2008, Perot publicly came out against Republican candidate John McCain and endorsed Mitt Romney for President. He also announced that he would soon be launching a new website with updated economic graphs and charts.[30] In June 2008, the blog launched, focusing on entitlements (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security), the U. S. national debt and related issues.[31]

[edit] Family
Perot is married to Margot Birmingham; they have five children (Ross Jr., Nancy, Suzanne, Carolyn, and Katherine). As of 2007, the Perots have 15 grandchildren.

[edit] Honors
On April 22, 2009, Ross Perot was made a Honorary Green Beret at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center in Fayetteville, North Carolina, that also honored the OSS, Alamo Scouts and the First Special Service Force, elite World War Two units that were inducted into the "1st Special Forces" Regiment.

Mr. Perot was inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame in 1988.

On September 18, 2009, the Texarkana Independent School District named him (1947 graduate of Texas High School) as 2009 Distinguished Alumni.[4][32]

In May 2009, he was appointed an honorary chairman of The OSS Society.

On October 15, 2009, the United States Military Academy at West Point awarded him with the distinguished Sylvanus Thayer Award.[33]

[edit] Electoral history
United States presidential election, 1992

Bill Clinton/Al Gore (D) - 44,909,806 (43.0%) and 370 electoral votes (32 states and D.C. carried)
George H. W. Bush/Dan Quayle ® (Inc.) - 39,104,550 (37.4%) and 168 electoral votes (18 states carried)
Ross Perot/James Stockdale (I) - 19,743,821 (18.9%) and 0 electoral votes
Andre Marrou/Nancy Lord (L) - 290,087 (0.3%) and 0 electoral votes
United States presidential election, 1996

Bill Clinton/Al Gore (D) (Inc.) - 47,400,125 (49.2%) and 379 electoral votes (31 states and D.C. carried)
Bob Dole/Jack Kemp ® - 39,198,755 (40.7%) and 159 electoral votes (19 states carried)
Ross Perot/Pat Choate (Ref.) - 8,085,402 (8.4%) and 0 electoral votes
[edit] References
^ BOWIE COUNTY, TEXAS - BIRTHS 1930
^ The Ancestors of Ross Perot
^ Posner, Gerald (1996). Citizen Perot. New York City: Random House. p. 8.
^ a b "Texarkana Independent School District Names H. Ross Perot as 2009 Distinguished Alumni". Texarkana Independent School District. 2009-09-17. http://www.txkisd.net/pressreleases/9%2016...ed%20Alumni.pdf. Retrieved 2006-09-17.
^ a b c Townley, Alvin. Legacy of Honor: The Values and Influence of America's Eagle Scouts. New York: St. Martin's Press. pp. 89–100, 108, 187, 194, 249, 260, 265. ISBN 0-312-36653-1. http://www.thomasdunnebooks.com/TD_TitleDe...ISBN=0312366531. Retrieved 2006-12-29.
^ Ray, Mark (2007). "What It Means to Be a super duper rich person". Scouting Magazine. Boy Scouts of America. http://www.scoutingmagazine.org/issues/0701/a-what.html. Retrieved 2007-01-05.
^ Sam Wyly, 1000 Dollars & an Idea, Publisher: Newmarket, ISBN 1557048037
^ Henry Moscow, "An Astonishment of New York Superlatives: Biggest, Smallest, Longest, Shortest, Oldest, First, Last, Most, Etc." New York Magazine vol. 7, no. 1 (31 December 1973/7 January 1974) p. 53.
^ Magna Carta Is Going on the Auction Block September 25, 2007
^ Dell Pays 68% Premium for Perot’s Health TechnologyBloomberg.com,September 22, 2009
^ a b c Patrick E. Tyler (1992-06-20). "Perot and Senators Seem Headed for a Fight on P.O.W.'s-M.I.A.'s". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...755C0A964958260. Retrieved 2008-01-05.
^ a b c George J. Church (1992-06-29). "The Other Side of Perot". Time. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/...75891-6,00.html. Retrieved 2008-01-24.
^ Patrick E. Tyler (1992-06-05). "Perot to Testify in Senate on Americans Missing in Southeast Asia". The New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...755C0A964958260. Retrieved 2008-01-24.
^ "Time Magazine cover: H. Ross Perot". 1992-05-25. http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19920525,00.html.
^ "THE 1992 CAMPAIGN: Racial Politics; Perot Speech Gets Cool Reception at N.A.A.C.P.". 1992=07-12. http://www.nytimes.com/1992/07/12/us/the-1...n-at-naacp.html.
^ Samuel James Eldersveld, Hanes Walton. "Political Parties in American Society". p.69.
^ UNDER THE BIG TOP -- THE OVERVIEW; PEROT QUITS RACE, LEAVING TWO-MAN FIELD; CLINTON VOWS CHANGE AND 'NEW COVENANT' AS HE AND BUSH COURT ABANDONED VOTERS,ROBIN TONER, NY Times, July 17, 1992
^ THE 1992 CAMPAIGN: The Overview; PEROT SAYS HE QUIT IN JULY TO THWART G.O.P. 'DIRTY TRICKS', Richard L. Berke, NY Times, October 26, 1992
^ "THE 1992 CAMPAIGN: Ross Perot; Perot Says He May Rejoin Race To Publicize His Economic Plan", Richard L. Berke, NY Times, September 19, 1992
^ Barta, Carol (1997-03-28). "Ex-Perot aide says he set up '92 `dirty tricks', He says GOP did not tap campaign phones". Dallas Morning News. http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archiv...ackval=GooglePM.
^ THE 1992 CAMPAIGN: The Media; Perot's 30-Minute TV Ads Defy the Experts, Again, KOLBERT, ELIZABETH. New York Times. (Late Edition). New York, N.Y.: Oct 27, 1992. pg. A.19
^ THE 1992 CAMPAIGN: On the Trail; POLL GIVES PEROT A CLEAR LEAD. New York Times. New York, N.Y.: Jun 11, 1992. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html...755C0A964958260
^ [1]
^ Politics: Who Cares by Peirce Lewis, Casey McCracken, and Roger Hunt (American Demographics, October 1994, vol. 16, no. 10) p. 23. http://www.hks.harvard.edu/case/3pt/perot_vote.html
^ THE 1992 ELECTIONS: DISAPPOINTMENT - NEWS ANALYSIS An Eccentric but No Joke; Perot's Strong Showing Raises Questions On What Might Have Been, and Might Be - New York Times
^ "Would Ross Perot Have Won the 1992 Presidential Election under Approval Voting?", Steven J. Brams and Samuel Merrill III, PS: Political Science and Politics, Vol. 27, No. 1 (March, 1994), pp. 39-44, Published by: American Political Science Association
^ Reaves, Jessica; Frank Pelligrini (2000-10-03). "Bush plays off expectations; Gore learns from mistakes". cnn.com. http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/s...s.tm/index.html. Retrieved 2008-08-14. ""Gore's decisive victory was the saving of NAFTA and the beginning of the end of Perot as even a semi-serious public figure""
^ [2]
^ [3]
^ Ross Perot Slams McCain | Newsweek Voices - Jonathan Alter | Newsweek.com
^ perotcharts.com
^ "Perot named TISD Distinguished Alumni". Texarkana Gazette. 2009-09-17. http://www.texarkanagazette.com/news/local...d-alumni-76.php. Retrieved 2006-09-17.
^ "List of Thayer Award Recipients". West Point AOG. 2009-10-10. http://www.westpointaog.org/NetCommunity/Page.aspx?pid=444. Retrieved 2009-10-14.
Clinton, Bill (2005). My Life. Vintage. ISBN 1-4000-3003-X.
Forbes 400
Rapoport, Ronald and Walter Stone. Three's a Crowd: The Dynamic of Third Parties, Ross Perot, and Republican Resurgence Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005.
[edit] Further reading
Thomas M. Defrank et al. Quest for the Presidency, 1992 Texas A&M University Press. 1994.
Mason, Todd (1990). Perot. Business One Irwin. ISBN 1-55623-236-5 An unauthorized biography by a longtime Perot watcher.
Doron P. Levin, Irreconcilable Differences: Ross Perot Versus General Motors (New York: Plume, 1990)
Thomas Moore, The GM System is Like a Blanket of Fog, Fortune, February 15, 1988
Posner, Gerald Citizen Perot: His Life and Times Random House. New York 1996
[edit] External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Ross Perot
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Ross Perot
Perot Charts; a blog launched June 2008 by Perot to examine different national issues with charts and graphs.
United We Stand, H. Ross Perot; text of the book published by Perot in 1992 to mark the launch of his Presidential campaign, complete with charts. The text is hosted by the site of the organization he created that year United We Stand America, as saved by The Internet Archive.

[graham4anything]

Bush 41 most certainly would have won the popular vote in 1992

there should NEVER be a president who only wins 42.6 percent of the vote as Clinton did

talk about a theft

there should be runoffs then between the top 2

and Clinton wasn't strong enough to beat Bush one on one

This post has been edited by graham4anything: Feb 3 2010, 02:53 PM

[graham4anything]

the important thing is

Perot was NOT by any means interested in the common man
he was a meglamaniac power hungry republican conservative and pro-war at that

and wasn't interested in anything to do with the little guy

also, he was demolished by Al Gore in the debate they had on NAFTA

[txbluejay]

I don't believe he was just for himself, and had he not dropped out of the race, he could have very well won the election. But even so, it doesn't mean that I agree with every decision he's ever made. But then again, I don't agree in lock-step with any candidate, I would imagine.

And why is it that no candidate should win with only 42.9% of the votes? Don't you believe in democracy and people's right to vote? Btw, you never told me who you voted for in 1992. I wouldn't be surprised if it was for Perot - after all - just a couple of years ago, you weren't criticizing him like you are now.

edited

[jeffmoskin]

the important thing is

Perot was NOT by any means interested in the common man
he was a meglamaniac power hungry republican conservative and pro-war at that

and wasn't interested in anything to do with the little guy

also, he was demolished by Al Gore in the debate they had on NAFTA

So why did he do it?

And do it AGAIN with Dole?

[graham4anything]

Oh puh-leaze Graham, you just can't stand that I voted for him, huh? I don't believe he was just for himself, and had he not dropped out of the race, he could have very well won the election. But even so, it doesn't mean that I agree with every decision he's ever made. But then again, I don't agree in lock-step with any candidate, I would imagine.

And why is it that no candidate should win with only 42.9% of the votes? Don't you believe in democracy and people's right to vote? Btw, you never told me who you voted for in 1992. I wouldn't be surprised if it was for Perot - after all - just a couple of years ago, you weren't criticizing him like you are now.

I never told you? Do we talk? I don't even know you.
What do you have to do with the thread? And I knew Perot was a nutjob from friends in Dallas and Houston way before the election itself of 1992.

Perot could have run, he was leading in April. But I never would have voted for him.Or any other conservative.

I voted for Gore in the geneeral (as VP) in 1992 and 1996.

of course as every knows I voted for Jerry Brown in 1992 democratic primary and Jesse Jackson in 1984 and 1988 democratic primary

I have never not voted for a democrat in the general and I never will

A candidate should really have to get over 50% of the vote as Obama did in 2008 as Jimmy Carter did in 1976 and Richard Nixon did in 1968 and 1972
as LBJ did in 1964(and Obama will in 2012, which will be a slaughter like LBJ vs. Barry who? in 1984.)

they should hold runoff elections

had they had runooff elections in 2000, Al Gore would handily have defeated Ralph Nader
and Bush41 would have easily beat Clinton.

Meanwhile though, did you read anything in the first post in this thread?

[graham4anything]

the important thing is

Perot was NOT by any means interested in the common man
he was a meglamaniac power hungry republican conservative and pro-war at that

and wasn't interested in anything to do with the little guy

also, he was demolished by Al Gore in the debate they had on NAFTA

So why did he do it?

And do it AGAIN with Dole?

he did it to defeat Bush (I don't think he even wanted to be president) (and neither did Bush forthat matter)
He had a personal grudge against Bush going back

Why did he run the 2nd time? EGO.
Why did Nader run again in 2004?

one thing Perot could care less about though was the little people

[brossignol]

(and Obama will in 2012, which will be a slaughter like LBJ vs. Barry who? in 1984.)

I agree.

[jeffmoskin]

A candidate should really have to get over 50% of the vote as Obama did in 2008 as Jimmy Carter did in 1976 and Richard Nixon did in 1968 and 1972
as LBJ did in 1964(and Obama will in 2012, which will be a slaughter like LBJ vs. Barry who? in 1984.)

Accuracy alert.

Barry Who was in 1964, not 1984.

[txbluejay]

I did read your first post, but I don't buy into all of it. I happen to know of people who have worked for Perot and say he was a very
good boss to work for - treats his employees right.


I'm a registered democrat - and consider myself to be a moderate one at that. But party isn't all that matters. It's the candidate. So there has
been a time when I voted for an independent when I believed in what that person stood for (or perceived him to stand for). And I wouldn't be past
doing it again if there was a really good independent candidate. Btw, I wasn't really familar with Gore back when he was running as Clinton's VP.
I really didn't get to know him until he ran as President in the 2000 election.

I don't get people that get so entrenched in the two party system and will stick by everything their party does, even when their party, or maybe a
particular politician in their party, is doing something wrong. I don't agree with that. It's like the baptist minister here (I mentioned last year that he
was on a 48 hour mystery) who was just convicted a couple of weeks ago of murdering his wife 4 years ago, but made it look like a suicide. Initially,
the suicide was not questioned (obviously because he was a preacher) and no autopsy was done. However, the family of the victim eventually became
suspicious and the body was exhumed 2-3 mos. later and a lot of incriminating evidence was subsequently discovered. He was found guilty and sentenced
to 65 years. This is something that I abhor. Despite the fact that I'm baptist, I am disgusted that this minister would abuse his position as a preacher and
think he could get away with murder because of his position. Btw, a meterologist from Long Island came and testified at the hearing how he attempted to
sexually assault her one time at Baylor. Her name was Lori Mueller. Ever heard of her?

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that just because I may belong to a party doesn't mean I'm going to support everything they do, if it's something I don't
agree with.

edited.

[graham4anything]

A candidate should really have to get over 50% of the vote as Obama did in 2008 as Jimmy Carter did in 1976 and Richard Nixon did in 1968 and 1972
as LBJ did in 1964(and Obama will in 2012, which will be a slaughter like LBJ vs. Barry who? in 1984.)

Accuracy alert.

Barry Who was in 1964, not 1984.

typo alert obiously and it was redundant to mentiopn year ago as I already ahd wrote 1964 when LBJ creamed Barry Goldwater
just as Obama will cream the opponents in 2012.

You are correct.
1984 I voted for Jesse Jackson then Walter Mondale in the general
1988 Jesse Jackson then Dukakis in the general
1992 Jerry Brown.

Bob Dole and John McCain were both similiar candidates, weren't they? Both basically taking a dive

the one time this board was together on any issue was Al Gore around 2005ish way before Obama was thought to be in the race

[Frenchy]

A candidate should really have to get over 50% of the vote as Obama did in 2008 as Jimmy Carter did in 1976 and Richard Nixon did in 1968 and 1972
as LBJ did in 1964(and Obama will in 2012, which will be a slaughter like LBJ vs. Barry who? in 1984.)

Accuracy alert.

Barry Who was in 1964, not 1984.

Ah, yes. My first taste of politics. We did mock campaigns and election that year. I was a junior and worked for Goldwater.

[jeffmoskin]

Ah, yes. My first taste of politics. We did mock campaigns and election that year. I was a junior and worked for Goldwater.

I campaigned for LBJ because he said "We are not about to send American boys 9 or 10,000 miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves."

Goldwater wanted to "bomb 'em back to the stone age."

The sad reality is that had Goldwater been elected, and had Goldwater suggested bombing em back to the stone age, he would have been laughed out of DC. Only LBJ had the political clout to actually get away with it.

Live and learn.