I was born in 1956, and since then I've never seen a US Presidential candidate that would have been as great and as good a President as I suspect Ross Perot would have been. He botched up the one best chance he had by withdrawing from the race, then re-entered it too late. Too bad, but I voted for him anyway.
So here's to you Ross, the only politician in my lifetime worth a damn. From Wikipedia:
Henry Ross Perot (
pronounced /pəˈroʊ/; born June 27, 1930) is an
American businessman 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.
[1]
With an estimated net worth of about
US$3.5 billion in 2009, he is ranked by
Forbes as the
85th-richest person in America.
[2]
Early life
Perot was born in
Texarkana, Texas, to Luly Maye Perot (née Ray) and Gabriel Ross Perot.
[3] His father was a
cotton broker.
[4] He attended a private school called Patty Hill. He graduated from
Texas High School in Texarkana in 1947.
[5] One of Perot's boyhood friends was
Hayes McClerkin, later
Speaker of the
Arkansas House of Representatives and a prominent Texarkana, Arkansas, lawyer.
[6
Perot joined the
Boy Scouts of America and made
Eagle Scout in 1942, after only thirteen months in the program. He is a recipient of the
Distinguished Eagle Scout Award.
[7][8]
Perot entered the
United States Naval Academy in 1949 and helped establish its
honor system.
[7] By the time he graduated in 1953 he was
president of his class and battalion commander.
[citation needed] By late 1954,
Perot was made a
lieutenant, junior grade. In 1955, however, 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.
[citation needed]
Perot married Margot Birmingham of
Greensburg,
Pennsylvania, in 1956.
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,
[9] 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 seventy-seven times before he was given 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 rose 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.
[10]
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 was unable to 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. In 2007, it was sold by the Perot Foundation, in order to provide "for medical research, for improving public education and for assisting wounded soldiers and their families."
[11] The document sold for $21.3 million
USD on December 18, 2007 to
David Rubenstein, managing director of the
Carlyle Group and kept on display at the National Archives.
[12]
In 1988 he founded
Perot Systems Corporation, Inc. in
Plano, Texas. His son,
H. Ross Perot, Jr., eventually succeeded him as CEO. In September 2009, Perot Systems was acquired by Dell for $3.9 billion.
[13]
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.
[citation needed] Perot led the Texas War on Drugs Committee that proposed five laws, all of which were passed by the legislature.
[citation needed]
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.
[citation needed] The best known of Perot's proposals that 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.
[citation needed] 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.
[citation needed] Another key reform measure was a call for teacher competency testing, which was strongly opposed by the teachers unions in Texas.
[citation needed]
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,
[14] and that government officials were covering up POW/MIA investigations in order to avoid revealing a drug smuggling operation used to finance a secret war in
Laos.
[15] 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.
[14][15] In 1990, Perot reached agreement with Vietnam's Foreign Ministry to become its business agent in the event that diplomatic relations were normalized.
[16] Perot also launched private investigations of, and attacks upon,
U.S. Department of Defense official
Richard Armitage.
[14][15]
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.
[citation needed] Perot asserted that the United States "had grown arrogant and complacent after
the War" [referring to
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 [its] past while the rest of the world was building its future."
[citation needed] 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?
[citation needed]
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.
[citation needed] Gargan later founded "Throw the Hypocritical Rascals Out" (THRO), which Ross Perot supported.
[citation needed]
Perot did not support
President George H. W. Bush and vigorously opposed the United States involvement in the 1990-1991
Persian Gulf War.
[citation needed] He unsuccessfully urged Senators to vote against the war resolution, and began to consider his own presidential run.
[citation needed]
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 fifty states. With such declared policies as balancing the
federal budget, a firm
pro-choice stance on abortion, expansion of the
war on drugs, ending
outsourcing of jobs, opposition to
gun control, belief in
protectionism on trade, advocating 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.
[18]
Perot's candidacy received increasing media attention when the competitive phase of the primary season ended for the two major parties. 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.
[19]
Several months before 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 fifty states. This sense of momentum was reinforced when Perot employed two savvy campaign managers in Democrat
Hamilton Jordan and Republican
Ed Rollins.
[citation needed]
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.
[citation needed]
On July 11, while attending an
NAACP meeting, Perot, in describing the criminality of certain populations, referred to them to the members as "your people", causing a negative reaction.
[20]
By the summer Perot commanded a lead in the presidential race with thirty-nine percent of the vote,
[21] but on July 16, Perot unexpectedly dropped out.
[22] Perot eventually stated the reason was that he received threats that digitally altered photographs would be released by the Bush campaign to sabotage his daughter's wedding.
[23] 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.
[24]
In September he qualified for all fifty state ballots. On October 1, he announced his intention to reenter the presidential race. He said that
Republican operatives had wanted to reveal compromising photographs 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 photographs, and that he had created the hoax with others who were not involved with any political campaign. Barnes was a Bush supporter, and believed that if it were revealed that Republicans were involved in dirty tricks, it would harm Bush's candidacy.
[25]
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 advertisements; this advertising garnered more viewership than many sitcoms, with one Friday night program in October attracting 10.5 million viewers.
[26]
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 thirty 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.
[7]
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.
[27] 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."
[28]
Perot denounced Congress for its inaction in his speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., on March 18, 1992. Perot said:
This city 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.
[29]
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. Unlike Perot, however, some other third party candidates since Roosevelt have won electoral college votes. (
Strom Thurmond had 39 in 1948,
George Wallace had 46 in 1968 and
John Hospers won one in 1972). 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 more than $50,000 annually).
[30] 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.
[31]
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.
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. 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.
[32] Support for NAFTA went from 34% to 57%.
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).
Later activities
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.
[33] 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 that he had raised in his presidential runs.
[34]
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.
[35] In June 2008, the blog launched, focusing on entitlements (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security), the U.S. national debt and related issues.
[36]
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.
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 a 2009 Distinguished Alumnus.
[37]
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.
[38]
In honor of his 80th birthday, the bridge connecting Walton and University drives in Texarkana, Texas, was named the H. Ross Perot Bridge.
[39]
On Oct. 2, 2010, Perot was given the
William J. Donovan Award from the OSS Society at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Washington, D.C. He is the 26th receipent of the award.
[40]
Electoral history
United States presidential election, 1992
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 (R) - 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
The Downside of Anti-Gravity
Engineer's View of Men and Women
