MAKE THE MONEY AND RUN

Stephen Robinson on the

presidential ambitions of a gung-ho Texan multi-billionaire

Washington JUST AS the November presidential elec- tion seemed to be settling down as a dull two-horse race between George Bush and Bill Clinton, the devil you don't know, a Texan multi-billionaire, is threatening to make it interesting again.

H. Ross Perot is 61 years old, jug-eared with a Marine crew cut, and has all the driving ambition of a man who stands only 5ft7ins in his socks. He is implausibly rich and, judging by the mean look in his eye during television interviews, he has given in the past few days, he could be deadly seri- ous about running for the presidency, on an independent ticket.

Incredibly, a campaign which he claims began as a bit of a lark with a radio inter- view a few weeks ago is gathering enough momentum to put the wind up the Bush campaign. 'You have to take seriously any- body who's got $2 billion in the bank and wants to run for president,' says Charles Black, a Bush campaign strategist, nervous- ly.

Perot's associates in Texas have long sus- pected he might take a run for the White House. 'If someone as blessed as I am is not willing to pick up a shovel and clean out the barn, who will?' he asks disingenu- ously.

'Things don't just happen with H. Ross Perot,' says an associate who has known him for some years. 'If he enters the race properly, you can bet your life he will run absolutely to win.'

Officially, Perot will formally declare only if 'the people' demand it of him, and to help them to that end he has obligingly set up a 100-line, toll-free telephone switchboard in Dallas so folks can ring in and pledge their five dollars each: 'I want them to have skin in the game.'

But Perot will not only be the candidate. He will also be the banker. He has offered to put $100 million of his own money into the kitty, a good start. He has said that if he runs he will not attack his rivals person- ally. But he has a deep contempt for George Bush who he sees as ineffectual and bogus.

Perot is very conscious of his roots as a good ol' boy from east Texas, the son of a horse-trader, and likes to remind people that he began breaking broncos at the age of eight (his nose is crooked from early falls).

H. Ross Perot made his fortune in the great coniputer boom of the 1960s with a company he founded called Electronic Data Services. He ran the business like a personal militia, enforcing strict dress and behaviour codes on his workforce, and it ballooned into one of the most successful computer service companies of all time.

He sold out to General Motors in 1984 for a cool $2.5 billion, but he didn't walk away; instead he took a seat on the notori- ously conservative GM board. Perot picked some heroic fights with his fellow directors, publicly denouncing the senior management for their incompetence and lethargy. His favourite book is a manage- ment primer called Attila the Hun, which he distributed widely among the GM man- agers. He so embarrassed the Detroit headquarters that two years later GM paid a further $750 million to get rid of him altogether.

If he is an unusual businessman, he is also a political maverick. In 1969 he char- tered two Boeing 707s to ferry Christmas presents to American prisoners of war in North Vietnam, but the authorities would not co-operate. To this day he is absolutely convinced the Vietnamese are still holding American servicemen.

When two of his employees were impris- oned in Iran in 1979, he flew to Teheran to begin personal negotiations with the authorities even as he plotted a more robust approach. He commissioned a for- mer Green Beret colonel to mastermind an outlandish rescue mission which — incredibly — succeeded when the group persuaded a revolutionary mob to storm the jail where Perot's employees were being held. The episode was subsequently related in a thriller by Ken Follett and a television series. His CV would certainly make good copy for presidential campaign advertisements. Yet it says a lot about the unattractiveness of Bush and Clinton that a man with much more money than politi- cal savvy can actually be putting the wind up both their campaigns.

Every election voters claim to be 'mad as hell' with Washington, and then go on to vote for more of the same, but early evi- dence suggests this time could be different.

There is genuine national rage at the latest scandal to have broken at the House of Representatives' private bank. For years congressmen have been running up huge overdrafts by writing uncovered cheques, a serious offence for most Americans. To much of America this has come to symbol- ise everything that is wrong not just with Congress, but with Washington.

Where Bush simply rehearses traditional Republican rhetoric about the 'liberal Democratic Congress', Perot threatens to suspend the constitution and eliminate Congress's right to raise taxes.

Perot may be gung-ho, but he has a soft centre and says he is on the side of the lit- tle guy. In his business career he was famous for looking after his employees. He is reportedly courting Jesse Jackson as a potential vice-presidential running mate which would ensure the most bizarrely bal- anced ticket in American history. Perot is pro-abortion, anti-free trade with Mexico (because he says it will destroy American jobs), and — like Pat Buchanan — was dead against the Gulf war.

'We rescued the emir of Kuwait,' he said recently. 'Now if I knock on your door and say I'd like to borrow your son to go to the Middle East so that this dude with 70 wives, who's got a minister for sex to find him a virgin every Thursday night, can have his throne back, you'd probably hit me in the mouth.'

Third party candidates have rarely done well in presidential elections. John Ander- son got 6.6 per cent of the vote in 1980.

George Wallace 13 per cent in 1968. Inde- pendent candidates do not win elections, nor do they necessarily lose them for either of the major parties: they tend to make them closer.

But undeterred, the Perot team has qui- etly opened up a campaign office in Penn- sylvania Avenue a few blocks from the White House, and Perot supporters have set about getting him on the ballot as an independent in all 50 states. In Texas alone, the rules require 54,000 signatures on a petition to run on the ballot in November, but then Perot is not one to duck a challenge. The calls are flooding in to Texas and Washington at the rate of 2,000 an hour, and organisations are springing up in every state.

In most respects the putative Perot for President campaign seems surreal. But thus far in the 1992 election the outsiders have done well — particularly those with no connection to Washington. Ross Perot won't win the election. But he would give millions of disenchanted Americans reason to vote.

Stephen Robinson is Washington Correspon- dent of the Daily Telegraph.