Ross Perot was before my time as a voter, and if I could have voted in 1992 I would have voted for President Clinton.
MSNBC portrays Perot as a person who first loves America, built EDS, sold it to General Motors and became a billionare, and was a strong advocate for everyone paying their taxes. Here is his Wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Perot
I post because I think Ross Perot might do better with the debt ceiling and the budget than any of the clowns in Washington. According to MSNBC Perot was a strong supporter of keeping Medicare and Social Security properly funded. And, was adamantly against outsourcing - amazing in a Republican these days. What do you think?
My recollection of Perot’s candidacies in 1992 and 1996 include:
A) a lot of charts
B) a fondness for saying things like “just open up the hood and fix it” without any real details
C) his arguments against NAFTA being utterly demolished by Al Gore in a debate on Larry King.
Perot might have had a good perspective on how to resolve the budget mess, but lots of people have good perspectives on how to solve the budget mess. The problem is getting anyone else to accept their perspective.
Another problem is that Perot’s Reform Party had no consistent ideology. It was a coalition of old-school progressives (not the lefty kind; good-government deficit-hawks – see the Independence Party) like John Anderson, and nativist-isolationist-populist paleocons like Pat Buchanan (see the America First Party). Only Perot’s personality (plus a shared sense of political-outsiders’ resentment) brought them together – and Perot steadfastly refused to allow the party to build on any more stable basis, or to turn the party into anything more durable or important than a vehicle for his presidential candidacies. Of course when he gave up, the party fell apart, or split along its natural fault-lines.
Or there’s his perspective that the major-party candidates were deliberately sabotaging his daughter’s wedding. Unfortunately, I think the current political landscape already has the crazy niche filled.
Ross was kind of a whacky guy. I voted for him twice because I held the faint hope (still do) that a realistic third party might form in America. I didn’t actually want Ross in the Oval Office. As a wealthy cooperate executive he was used to getting his way and I think he would have been frustrated and ineffective in a political position.
He talked of a great sucking sound as American jobs would go offshore. How was that prediction? He was against NAFTA because of the impact on American jobs and taxes. He was right about lots of things. His fortune was made mostly off government contracts for data processing though.
He was not a nut .
You prefer the more formal “batshit insane,” perhaps?
Perot was not stupid and a few of his ideas had merit. However, he always was more than a bit off kilter and was quite willing to try to shape reality to meet his needs. This included his claims about foreign nationals “attacking” his house, claims that the Republicans had a plan to sabotage his daughter’s wedding, his willingness to go along with the revised story that he organized a rescue of his employees from the Iranian Revolution when they had actually been imprisoned before the revolution on charges of corruption, his belief that there were hundreds of prisoners left in Southeast Asia following the Vietnam War, along with other nonsense.
He was an outstanding salesman, (although tales of sweetheart deals followed him throughout the life of EDS), but he was an autocrat that believed that he could change the world simply by being given the title to do so. (Witness his odd relationship with General Motors.) That he was successful in running EDS as his personal paternalistic fiefdom simply reinforced many of those beliefs.
Over the last 30 years, he has repeatedly demonstrated an odd paranoia (including accusations that the CIA was involved in plots against him).
Whatever the values of some of his ideas, he is a nut.
OK. But not insane. The super rich get paranoid . He financed a rescue mission to south east Asia . There were plenty of ex military men who were pushing that idea. Somehow we give a lot of credence to ex military types.
Exactly so, and this is the problem with the idea that CEO skills will easily translate to elective office: CEOs don’t have congresses, and they don’t have voters.
The problem isn’t just “the clowns in Washington,” it’s we the people who keep voting for candidates promising a free lunch.
A rescue mission to South East Asia? When? To rescue whom? His imagined “hundreds” of POWs?
He did finance a rescue mission to Iran. A couple of his boys got caught in a bribery scandal before the Shah left and he decided to send in some mercs to break them out rather than actually defending them in court, (I wonder why?), but when the revolution broke out, his tough old mercs just waited until the prison doors were opened to let out the political prisoners and escorted his people out in the confusion.
As someone who actually voted for Perot, I’ll just say:
Pretty much this is spot on. No need to bring him in, he jumped the shark decades ago, and ‘the current political landscape already has the crazy niche filled’.
They do have boards of directors, banks, analysts, activist investors, employees to keep happy, regulators, media, customers, etc. Let’s not act like CEOs are dictators that get their way without any accountability.
As I was too young in 1992 I have no real first hand knowledge to offer on Ross Perot. I just thought MNBC pulled some interesting profile information. I wondered if Perot were active today if he could slam those Tea Party bastards upside the head to get corporations and the wealthy to pay their fair share of taxes.
I saw on the news last night that Democrats copied all House Republicans with a letter President Reagan wrote in 1983 to get the debt ceiling raised when he was in a pinch. They are waiting for a response. If Reagan and billionaire activist Ross Perot can not motivate these Tea Partiers how can you get these representative on board? Is President Obama going to have to fall back on the U. S. Constitution and force raising the debt ceiling down Tea Party throats?
I tell you U. S. Senator Bernie Sanders, and pundit Ed Schultz were furious on last nights Ed Show.
Well, Perot is a ghost looking for the light, let’s pass on further analysis of his psyche, the question is whether his “perspective” – that is, his policies – could help today. I say no; see post #2.
Interesting take. Perhaps we share similar concerns about the debt ceiling talks in Washington. I am mad as hell. :mad: I hope I am wrong. I feel President Obama is selling out the Democratic Party. I hope I am wrong, and all this talk is just a strategy to reach independent voters knowing that in the end Obama can count on his base.
This is a good time to watch the Ed Show on MNBC tempers are flaring. I look forward to tomorrow night when Bill Maher does his live HBO show. It has been a while since Maher gave us a strong rant!
Perot would say: get rid of NAFTA, get rid of the 10,000 page trade treaties with Japan and Communist China, and bring back our jobs, bring back our factories, and get rid of the tax evasion being done by American companies who now move their factories offshore to avoid paying income tax and avoid paying employee Social Security contributions.
With “Free Trade” American companies close our stateside factories and move our American jobs overseas in order to get out of paying taxes.
History has proven that Ross Perot was right.
Perot would say that if you bring back the jobs and put the people back to work, if you end the tax shelters of companies who outsource/offshore by making them bring our factories back and once again pay taxes on their production, then our federal tax revenues will increase dramatically.
Most people rejected the sensible economic policies of Ross Perot, and instead voted for “Hope and Change”.
How is that Hopey Changey thing going for you now?
Actually, most people voted for Bill Clinton over Ross Perot.
And it worked out pretty well, actually. Thanks for asking.
As for his economic policies, unless John McCain had a last second conversion I didn’t know about, people didn’t get a chance to reject those policies during the last Presidential election.
