Martin Peretz: Why Perot Matters
oss Perot ran for president twice, first in 1992 against George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, the second time in 1996 against Clinton and Bob Dole. In both races, he ran without the support of a major party. (He funded his initial run, under the banner "United We Stand," himself; the next, as a representative of the Reform Party, he did not.) I recently asked a small group of Harvard undergraduates, "Who is Ross Perot?" A Texas billionaire, said one. He bought a copy of the Magna Carta, said another, conjuring an idiosyncratic but correct detail from Perot's life. He also bought General Motors, piped up a third, and was wrong at that: Actually, Perot sold his company, Electronic Data Systems, to GM. The fourth said that Perot had run for president on a third-party ticket, but that she had little idea what it stood for: "For heaven's sake, the shambles of the party were split between Pat Buchanan and Ralph Nader in 2004." This is not an especially precise legacy. In some sense, Perot would have spent his money more meaningfully had he bought himself another private jet.
It's not only the young who have no idea who Perot was and for what he stood. Before reading Three's a Crowd: The Dynamic of Third Parties, Ross Perot, and Republican Resurgence (University of Michigan Press)--a stimulating and consequential study by two political scientists who are rare in that they work from both statistics and a deep (even instinctual) grasp of the party system--I could summon only Perot's obsession with nafta and his calls for cutting the deficit, which the Clinton-Gore administration went on to dissolve quite admirably. (Maybe it was Perot's hostility to nafta that lured Buchanan and Nader, paranoid isolationists both, to forage for votes and residual infrastructure in the detritus of the Reform Party.) And yet, forgotten though he may be, there are reasons for Democrats and Republicans alike to ponder Perot's legacy as the 2006 elections approach and the 2008 presidential race assumes form.
As the authors, Professors Ronald B. Rapoport and Walter Stone, know very well, Perot was not a typical third-party candidate. Many people were drawn to him, but they disagreed about why they were. When so many Americans were lured to Theodore Roosevelt's Bull Moose Party in 1912, they knew why: to tame capitalism, to preserve natural America, to extend national power in the world. In the 1920s, those who voted for Robert LaFollette knew why they had to become progressives: to oppose ruthless individualism and competition and to assert the principle and practice of cooperation. In 1948, the voters who cast their ballots for Strom Thurmond did so because they were racists, and those who supported Henry Wallace chose him because they and he were fellow travelers of communism and the Soviet Union. (Please don't roll your eyes. Wallace's Progressive Party was a pure creation of the Communist Party.) Buchanan is a xenophobe and a nativist, and his followers latched on to him because that is exactly what they wanted; Nader is a paranoid with an ascetic streak who, like his supporters, wants to bring down U.S. capitalism. There were no mysteries about what attracted supporters to these candidates.
By contrast, the only thing one might say without doubt about Perot is that he is a crank. But this is not politically clarifying. Which itself begs two questions. Why did Perot win so much of the popular vote (19 percent in 1992; 8 percent in 1996)? And why are those who will run the presidential campaigns of the major parties right now reading this book about a nutty political aspirant who has disappeared from public view?
The answer to the first of these queries is at least as impressionistic as it is statistical. People simply don't like the caucus and primary system in which unrepresentative and idiosyncratic states (like weird New Hampshire and ever-weirder Iowa) anoint front-runners and determine the direction of presidential races. It is also apparent that every state is a different campaign, which encourages the candidates to shift and dissemble and contradict, à la John Kerry in 2004. With Perot, however, you had someone who was who he was. He was simplistic, maybe, but he was not tricky. He did not have to beat down other candidates to make it into the finals. His candidacies were also suffused by a sense of freshness--if not exactly competence. (The only time he really lost a debate was the substantive one with Al Gore over nafta. Perot may have had a populist attitude. But Gore knew what he was talking about. The public grasped this, and it was at that very moment that Perot's star began to fall.) ...
Read entire article at New Republic
It's not only the young who have no idea who Perot was and for what he stood. Before reading Three's a Crowd: The Dynamic of Third Parties, Ross Perot, and Republican Resurgence (University of Michigan Press)--a stimulating and consequential study by two political scientists who are rare in that they work from both statistics and a deep (even instinctual) grasp of the party system--I could summon only Perot's obsession with nafta and his calls for cutting the deficit, which the Clinton-Gore administration went on to dissolve quite admirably. (Maybe it was Perot's hostility to nafta that lured Buchanan and Nader, paranoid isolationists both, to forage for votes and residual infrastructure in the detritus of the Reform Party.) And yet, forgotten though he may be, there are reasons for Democrats and Republicans alike to ponder Perot's legacy as the 2006 elections approach and the 2008 presidential race assumes form.
As the authors, Professors Ronald B. Rapoport and Walter Stone, know very well, Perot was not a typical third-party candidate. Many people were drawn to him, but they disagreed about why they were. When so many Americans were lured to Theodore Roosevelt's Bull Moose Party in 1912, they knew why: to tame capitalism, to preserve natural America, to extend national power in the world. In the 1920s, those who voted for Robert LaFollette knew why they had to become progressives: to oppose ruthless individualism and competition and to assert the principle and practice of cooperation. In 1948, the voters who cast their ballots for Strom Thurmond did so because they were racists, and those who supported Henry Wallace chose him because they and he were fellow travelers of communism and the Soviet Union. (Please don't roll your eyes. Wallace's Progressive Party was a pure creation of the Communist Party.) Buchanan is a xenophobe and a nativist, and his followers latched on to him because that is exactly what they wanted; Nader is a paranoid with an ascetic streak who, like his supporters, wants to bring down U.S. capitalism. There were no mysteries about what attracted supporters to these candidates.
By contrast, the only thing one might say without doubt about Perot is that he is a crank. But this is not politically clarifying. Which itself begs two questions. Why did Perot win so much of the popular vote (19 percent in 1992; 8 percent in 1996)? And why are those who will run the presidential campaigns of the major parties right now reading this book about a nutty political aspirant who has disappeared from public view?
The answer to the first of these queries is at least as impressionistic as it is statistical. People simply don't like the caucus and primary system in which unrepresentative and idiosyncratic states (like weird New Hampshire and ever-weirder Iowa) anoint front-runners and determine the direction of presidential races. It is also apparent that every state is a different campaign, which encourages the candidates to shift and dissemble and contradict, à la John Kerry in 2004. With Perot, however, you had someone who was who he was. He was simplistic, maybe, but he was not tricky. He did not have to beat down other candidates to make it into the finals. His candidacies were also suffused by a sense of freshness--if not exactly competence. (The only time he really lost a debate was the substantive one with Al Gore over nafta. Perot may have had a populist attitude. But Gore knew what he was talking about. The public grasped this, and it was at that very moment that Perot's star began to fall.) ...