He's Back
Perot's Assault on Clinton was First Salvo of Presidential Campaign
By Gerald Posner

Dallas Morning News, October 9, 1998


He's back. Like a recurring nightmare or a breath of fresh air, depending on how you feel about him, the diminutive Texan with an outsized ego, Ross Perot, has reentered public and political life this past week after a self-imposed two-year exile since his drubbing in the last presidential election. Just when you thought you had heard every pundit comment on the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, Perot used last month's Reform Party convention in Atlanta to launch a blistering attack, charging that Clinton "is mentally and emotionally unstable," comparing him to Adolph Hitler, Josef Stalin, Fidel Castro, and Saddam Hussein, and demanding that he resign immediately. The 350 party delegates from 40 states enthusiastically cheered Mr. Perot's extreme charges.

Three nights later, Mr. Perot appeared in his favorite television venue, Larry King Live, and this time launched an even more excessive attack, saying that "Either he's (Clinton) got mental troubles, or he does something like take drugs to spin him out from time to time." Mr. Perot even went so far as to cite supposed White House links to the Colombian drug cartel and a Russian drug smuggler. Mr. Perot used the soft-question format of the King show to launch an elaborate nationwide petition drive to demand Mr. Clinton's resignation.

For many observers, Mr. Perot merely seemed to be seeking a way to gain some headlines at President Clinton's expense. But for seasoned Perot watchers, the wily Texan was up to much more than a few rounds of Clinton bashing. He was instead quietly laying the groundwork for a third presidential race in 2000. The key was a rule change instituted at the just-finished Reform Party convention, a change that was completely overshadowed by the furor over Mr. Perot's Clinton assaults.

On the last day of the convention, party members voted that their candidate for the next election be required to gain access to ballots as an independent in all those states in which the Reform Party is not listed on the ballot. According to Party Chairman Russ Verney, because of its performance in the last presidential election, the party has won a place on 31 state ballots. As for the other 19, the new rule means that anybody who wants the Reform Party nomination must spend upwards of a few million dollars to work through the byzantine ballot access laws and obtain the necessary number of signed petitions to qualify in those states.

The party faithful say the rule change is necessary to insure that no one can enter the nominating process late and hijack their hard work. Actually, the rule change seems to be intended to let any potential competition know that Mr. Perot himself intends to be the nominee.

Few people have the wherewithal to spend the money that would be required to independently qualify in 19 states, and the few who do, do not want to become either another Dick Lamm, the former Colorado governor who was largely viewed as a stalking horse for Mr. Perot in 1996, or to be viewed as Mr. Perot's hand chosen candidate. Mr. Perot's control over the party apparatus, and his ruthless purging of party dissidents, leaves legitimate third party candidates - such as Bill Bradley, Colin Powell, or Lowell Wicker - steering clear of the Reform Party.

When asked by Larry King if he intended to run in 2000, Mr. Perot did the same bob and weave he pulled for months in 1996: "I have never wanted to be a candidate. I don't want to." Even the normally acquiescent King blurted, "Let's not go through this again, Ross."

Mr. Perot has always thought he was the only person fit to be president, and it is the one thing in his life that he has set his sights on, and then failed to achieve. In the next election, he will be 70 years old, a year younger than Dole when he last ran. And while he may be relegated to being a player somewhere between five and fifteen percent of the vote, he worries each party since he has virtually unlimited personal funds to spend on his campaign, and at this early stage, neither party is certain which of them loses the most from the millions of votes Mr. Perot could garner.

It is interesting that Mr. Perot made the Clinton-Lewinsky affair the reason for his public return. Although he has called on Clinton to resign, he is too smart to think that will happen. Instead, Mr. Perot's best hope is that Congress starts impeachment proceedings and they drag on interminably. In the Reform Party's dream scenario, a public fed up with Republican partisanship, and the shortcomings of the White House, may start looking for a third alternative, even a shop-worn one like Mr. Perot.

Gerald Posner is the author of numerous books, including Citizen Perot.
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