GETTING EVEN NUTTIER

Mark Steyn says Ross Perot's Reform party is split by an exotic power struggle over who should run for president

New Hampshire BACK in 1992, Texas billionaire Ross Perot emerged from obscurity and began blasting both Republicans and Democrats for treating the budget deficit 'like a crazy aunt we keep in the basement'. One wouldn't have thought crazy aunts in the basement were a widespread problem, even in the remoter parts of the Ozarks, but the analog apparently struck a chord with mil- lions of Americans, and suddenly the jug- eared squirt with the nasal whine and the folksy aphorisms was hotter than Uncle Bud's pants on lesbian mud-wrestling night. Perot opened his campaign appear- ances with Patsy Cline singing 'I'm Crazy' — mainly 'cause them fancy-pantses in Washington were saying he was crazy to figure he could solve the nation's problems with a few grade-school pie-charts. Truth to tell, the pie-charts were the least crazy thing about him. Most of them fancy- pantscs were saying he was crazy because, well, he's jes' plum crazy — that's to say, he is, in pie-chart terms, a fruitcake. Or as Ed Rollins, a Reagan man who worked briefly on the Perot For President campaign, sub- sequently put it: 'A paranoid lunatic on an ego trip.'

But the paranoid lunatic stacked up 19 per cent of the vote and, in doing so, deprived George Bush of his second term — which doubtless came as some consola- tion to Perot who'd temporarily quit the presidential race on the grounds that the Bush campaign were planning to sabotage his daughter's wedding. Traditionally, third candidates return to obscurity the morning after the election — like wossname, that guy who ran against Carter and Reagan in 1980. But Perot hung around. In 1995, he founded the Reform party and told his fel- low Americans that what this country needed was a George Washington the Sec- ond. And would this saviour of the nation by any chance be Perot himself? Pressed by his favourite interviewer, CNN's Larry King, Perot answered with his usual catch- phrase: 'This ent 'bout me, Lurry.' But somehow it always was.

In 1996, he ran again, explaining the rationale behind his presidential campaign to the Dallas Morning News: 'As I have said a thousand times, I will cut the grass, I will take out the trash, I will sleep under a bridge. I cannot live with the thought that we don't pass on a better, stronger country to our children.' At three o'clock in the morning a couple of weeks later, I came across a guy sleeping under a bridge and asked him if he was Ross Perot. He said no, he was Catherine the Great. A pity. I'd wanted to ask him whether that hapless Oriental he found wandering in his grounds after dark really was, as Perot claimed, a highly trained Vietcong assassin dispatched by the communists to eliminate him. Only one thing could be said with cer- tainty: this is one loonytoon who'd never say 'That's all, folks!'

Yet here we are in late 1999 and there's still no sign of a Perot candidacy. Instead, the unthinkable has occurred: the Reform party's got even nuttier, and there's no let- up in sight. Every crazy aunt in town is hammering on Perot's basement door, demanding to be allowed in to be nominat- ed as his party's presidential candidate. At present, the potential Reform party presi- dential nominees are as follows: Pat Buchanan, the anti-abortion, anti-big- business conservative, who believes America was wrong to enter the second world war.

Donald Trump, the pro-abortion, pro- big-business casino owner who fired off a fax attacking Pat for being soft on Adolf Hitler, or, as The Donald spells him, 'Adolph Hitler', perhaps confusing him with Adolph Green, screenwriter of Singin' in the Rain and lyricist of 'The Party's Over'.

Ralph Nader, the anti-big-business, pro-big-government scourge of the auto- mobile industry and perennial presidential candidate.

Jesse Ventura, the pro-abortion, pro- drugs, pro-hookers pro wrestler who's cur- rently governor of Minnesota. He loathes Pat because he loathes Perot and Perot's backing Pat, so Jesse's backing The Donald, but if The Donald pulls out he could run himself.

Warren Beatty, the pro-abortion, pro-sex- prone film star. He's had sex with Brigitte Bardot, Natalie Wood, Julie Christie, Isabelle Adjani and Madonna, but now he's considering getting into bed with Ross and Jesse. He wants to run for president because, he says, he's concerned politics is becoming too mixed up with showbusincss and shallow celebrity.

Cybill Shepherd, the pro-abortion, pro 'self-pleasuring' sitcom star.

Lowell Weickcr, former governor of Connecticut and the nearest thing to a reg- ular politician among this crowd. So forget about him, he's got no chance.

Colin Powell, America's most beloved man. Whoops, sorry, he told Reform he wasn't interested...

... but Harvey Powell is. He's a 34-year- old Kentucky real-estate agent, and the first to declare his candidacy officially. You have to be 35 to be president, but he will be by the time of his inauguration. And he's no stranger to the White House: when not tending to residential sales in Kentucky, he claims to have been doing consultancy work for Bill Clinton and to have been the man behind everything George Bush said and did during the Gulf War.

Obviously, there's a lot of power-broking going on in the smoke-filled rooms: would Trump be secretary of state in a Buchanan administration? Would Warren Beatty be willing to serve as Harvey Powell's vice- president? Would Ralph Nader accept the new cabinet post of Commissioner of Bor- dellos under President Ventura? These are all imponderables, as indeed is a more basic question: what kind of political party could attract all these guys? The current charac- terisation of Reform is as a party that's conservative on fiscal issues but relaxed on social ones. But Perot's about as unrelaxed on social issues as you can get. When he ran in 1992, he pledged that in a Perot adminis- tration there would be no adulterers, no homosexuals and no men with beards. As a point of comparison, Mrs Thatcher was indifferent on the matter of adulterers and homosexuals, but shared Perot's barbopho- bia, and it didn't seem to hurt her at the polls. But, as an hirsute chap myself, I've always believed that that last proscription was the one that cost him the presidency. At a stroke, he blew the inbred, stump- toothed, mountain-man vote — a natural Perot constituency.

At first glance, Jesse Ventura would raise suspicions on all three counts. His new autobiography talks unrepentantly of con- sorting with whores. True, he's not bearded, but he does have a luxuriant moustache. He's not gay but, when he's wrestling, he likes to prance about in a feather boa and Spangled pants, and frankly that mous- tache and the shaven head would not be out of place in the Village People if they ever decided to augment the Red Indian, construction worker and co. with a pro wrestler. Besides, there is an undeniable homoerotic undercurrent to the gravelly voiced, muscular disciplinarian's merchan- dising: the guy who drew the picture on his 'Head of State' T-shirt, lovingly exploring every contour of the back of the governor's skull, and the fellow who delineated the rippling pees of his bare torso on the 'Min- nesota's Governing Body' sweatshirt are the state's equivalent of Tom of Finland; these pin-ups are Robert Mapplethorpes for the white-trash crowd.

Anyway, Perot determined early on that this cat wasn't his bag and refused to give Jesse any money for last year's gubernatori- al campaign. When Jesse, quite unexpect- edly and without any help from Perot, was elected governor, he determined to exact his revenge on the pipsqueak and wrest his party from him. He had his first major vic- tory just a few weeks ago at the Reform party's national convention in Dearborn, Michigan, when Jesse's man, chicken farmer and professional blood donor (he's given over five gallons) Jack Gargan, defeated Perot's choice, Donna Donovan. As the results were declared and Jack acknowledged the cheers of the crowd, he turned to Donna and told her (she says), 'You're through.'

So, having dispatched Donna, the pro wrestler and the chicken farmer are reluc- tant to have Perot's presidential nominee foisted on them. Perot had supposedly assured Pat Buchanan that the nomination was his. Admittedly, this was before the recent contretemps over Pat's book. Perot has no desire to re-fight the second world war, but he shares Pat's distrust of foreign- ers — and not just the various assassins the Vietcong keep sending his way, though that's a start. Buchanan told Beijing the other day that, when he becomes president, they'll have sold their 'last pair of chop- sticks in any mall in the United States of America'. Actually, the Yellow Peril's export department doesn't bother much with chopsticks: that's what's so cunning about them. But they do make practically every toy sold in American shopping malls, including, according to dark but persistent rumour, the Jesse Ventura action figures, among them the 'Jesse Ventura Navy Seal Action Figure' (Jesse in combat fatigues), the 'Jesse Ventura Coach Action Figure' (Jesse in sweats and dalmatian track-pants) and the 'Jesse Ventura Governor Action Figure' (Jesse in beige suit, black socks and wingtips). Under a protectionist Buchanan regime, Jesse would have to get his action figures made by unproductive Minnesota lardbutts instead of wiry Orientals and that might cut into his profit margins on the $25 dolls. Perot's crowd, for their part, keep spreading the made-in-China gossip because they despise Phil 'Madman' Mad- sen, a founder of the Reform party who joined the Perotistas in 1992 but has since switched to Jesse and is now webmaster of the Ventura website and a salesman for Jesse dolls.

Governor Ventura wants to run for pres- ident in 2004 and needs someone to keep the seat warm for him — that's why he wants Trump to run this time. Jesse and The Donald have known each other since 1988, when Jesse took part in Wrestlemania in one of Trump's Atlantic City casinos. The governor doesn't think that Trump can win, but he knows he'll bring to the party natural Ventura voters: guys who like gam- bling, wrestling, booze, broads, etc. If Buchanan moves over, he'll just bring a lot of uptight, repressed Catholics. And the point about Reform is that any guy with a core of supporters can turn the party into whatever he wants it to be. It's actually very hard to participate in Republican and Democratic politics: unlike watching Oprah or buying cheeseburgers, you have to leave the house, get out of the car, regis- ter. But in the Reform party, Perot just sends you the ballots and you reply by toll- free telephone, fax or e-mail, regardless of whether or not you're a member.

Pat needs it more than The Donald: under the insane campaign finance laws in Washington, whoever wins the Reform nomination gets nearly $13 million in fed- eral funds. That's chump change to Trump, but Buchanan could do an awful lot with it. And, while Jesse may not like him, Pat has some unlikely supporters in the Reform ranks, including hard-left radi- cal feminist Lenora Fulani. Her ally, Jacqueline Salit, explains that that's because supporting a hard-right ideologue is a good way to make a point about the non-ideological nature of the party.

The Reagan voters disillusioned by Bush, who backed Perot in 1992, have faded from the Reform scene. In their place are Democrats disillusioned by Clinton, eco- crazies, New Agers, open-marriage swingers, gay groups, radical Marxists, vain celebrities ... and maybe Pat Buchanan. Personally, I think he'll chicken out and decide not to go with Reform. But, in flirt- ing with them, he's further exposed the dis- integration of the great protest movement that destroyed Bush. If they're looking for another Patsy Cline hit as this year's cam- paign theme, how about 'I Fall to Pieces'?

'The Gordons will come out to a man.'