Ross Perot runs for American presidency - 29 May 1992

Whenever I'm tempted, which is often, to start talking about American politics, especially in a presidential election year, I always recall a postcard I had years ago from a little old lady in Devon. I don't know why I condescend and say "a little old lady", I never saw her, she might have been a very large young lady, but I retain an old prejudice that morsels or what we'd now call "sound bites of wisdom" tend to come more often from little old ladies than from, say, strapping young athletes.

Anyway, I must have been talking that time about the men who were running for the presidency and I'd evidently been musing and speculating about the likely winner without quite committing myself. I got this postcard, which said simply, "Dear Mr Cook, Instead of telling us who might be president, why don't you wait till November and tell us who is?" A fine point, well taken and a caution not to go on too much to people abroad about the tedious process of sorting out the candidates, choosing them and then electing them.

But not only is this year's election not normal, the prospect for the November election is a repetition of something that has happened only twice in American history, the second time in 1824. Its the situation of an election in which no candidate gets a majority of the electoral vote and the solution prescribed by the Constitution is to send the problem to the House of Representatives, which then votes one vote for each state.

If this sounds alarming so it should, it's a situation that three, four months ago was a whimsical one tossed around lightly by academics, professors of political science and such. I took it up as a bizarre possibility simply with an old pro who chuckled. He was being kind and indulgent. Whenever, he said, there's a third party candidate, people begin to credit him with at least a third of the total electoral vote and the drama of going to the house. Not a prayer my friend. What we are talking about is one man, that small wiry 61-year-old, slightly whiney-voiced man with jug ears and a nose like a carrot, a presidential candidate about as far removed from the mind of a Hollywood casting director as it's possible to imagine. A Texas businessman whose main qualification to be president so far is the way he fits the old sentimental picture of the boy who proceeds from log cabin to White House. H for Henry but never spoken, H Ross Perot, P-e-r-o-t, an approximate French pronunciation for the good and proper reason that his ancestors were French settlers who went to Texas.

A year ago, less, few of us had ever heard of him. The earlier accounts of his life and career, mine was no different, started with the prescribed: a poor boy who borrowed a $1,000 30 years ago to found an electronic data system, which miraculously turned into a goldmine because the government found it was the first system that could easily and quickly process the accounts the whole paperwork of the government's health system. Medicare for everyone over 65 and Medicaid for the very poor. To those of us who are not given to appreciating the finer points of business expertise, this ability of a machine to process several million bills doesn't sound as exciting, shall we say, as Edison's looking for a filament that would burn in a vacuum and finally after testing 6,000 fibres coming on a shred of Japanese bamboo that lasted a 1,000 hours and so guaranteed that the world would be lit by electricity.

Then the invention of the safety pin and the zipper sounds modest, nevertheless they procured fortunes for their inventors and Ross Perot with the government as his main client did well enough on that borrowed $1,000 in eight years to sell the firm for, wait for it. $2,500 billion.

As we've come to look more closely into Ross Perot's origins and career, we find that the regulation poor boy did not exist. His father was a cotton broker and successful and the young Perot instead of doing the humble chores required of a traditional potential president like helping mum with the laundry, running a one-boy newspaper delivery system, teaching Sunday school – Nixon did all of them – Ross Perot managed to be accepted by the United States Naval Academy and subsequently spent four years in the navy, then he got out and joined IBM as a computer salesman. Five years later, he had the gall and the loan to breakaway and found the firm that built the system that helped the government process the bills that handed Mr Perot his $2,500 billion.

This whole story would never have been printed up and down the land if it had not been for a second thought, a second remark that Ross Perot made on a television talk show, oh, I think end of February. Apparently, he'd been sounding off before air time to the host about the miserable failure of both the traditional parties to lead the country, in particular to arrest or cure the deficit and to have the money to pay the appalling mounting costs of medicine for the old folks, namely Medicare.

So, when the show opened, the host to his famous four, simplifying every issue in a no-nonsense gutsy way asked his guests, "so do you plan to run for president?" Just as crisply, little Mr Perot said "no". Three-quarters of an hour later, he changed his mind on the air, yes he decided he would run for president if he could get enough people around the country to put his name on the petitions required to have his name printed on the November ballot. He'd want it to happen in all 50 states he said and that day or very shortly afterwards, he dropped a second bombshell and one that startled but delighted uncounted millions of citizens. The second bombshell sounded more like a swift wonderful firework display: Mr Perot would employ no managers, press agents, image polishers, he would solicit no funds because he was ready to cough up all the costs of his buttons and bows and literature and television exposure to the tune of $100 million of his own money.

Nothing like this plot has happened since the late Frank Capra directed Gary Cooper as Mr Deeds in an enormously popular movie in its day, but this was in life. Americans have always loved audacious mavericks, witness the existence of the word itself. In the middle of the last century, there was a man – a Texas Ranger – name Sam Maverick. He disapproved of the immemorial custom of branding calves, cruel he thought it was, but how was he to recognise his cattle from everyone else's? He'd take his chances he said, he'd take and call his own all the unbranded cattle on the range. There were an awful lot of them; he grew very rich to the indignation of his neighbours who called him a hypocrite.

Anyway, thereafter, all unbranded calves were called mavericks after Sam. All that old people remember about Sam, which took his surname into the language is that he was an eccentric whose eccentricity paid off, so inevitably Ross Perot shot on to the national scene as dramatically as melodramatically as a man out of a canon at a state fair. Every professional politician and pundit three months ago saw him as a raw entertaining novelty of a sort familiar in state politics, especially in the South and the Southwest.

Since he wasn't on the ballot in the primaries, nobody expected him even to begin to count as a factor in the presidential race, but then in some of the spring primaries the astonishing fact appeared that he was getting 20 and more per cent by a write-in vote in both the Democratic and the Republican primaries. Plainly, we all said, "a protest vote against Bush", but also against Clinton as representing the Democratic Party. Nothing serious, just a warning to the two main contenders and the two regular parties to mend their ways come up with more radical changes on the home front especially.

Then it was discovered that literally millions of Americans were ready and willing in every state to work for Perot. About a month ago, national polls were taken if the election were held today, who would you vote for? Over several polls it came out Bush 32%, Clinton 28%, Perot 24%. In Texas and mighty California, Perot was the outright winner over the other two.

Now, if that first division of the poll happened in November, even if the Bush and Clinton figures were reversed, it would not be enough to make either president, you must have a majority of the electoral vote not the popular vote. Several presidents, Wilson, Truman, have been what's called minority presidents, which means the total count of the popular vote of their opponents exceeded their popular vote. What counts is the total of the electoral votes assigned to each state in proportion to its population, so if Perot denied either Bush or Clinton the majority, then the election would go to the House of Representatives, which with its enormous majority of Democrats one vote one state would almost certainly throw the presidency to Mr Clinton, so the Democrats are not quite so agitated by the rise and clatter of Ross Perot as the president and his men.

I hear people say, "but what does Mr Perot stand for?" Ah, he's taking two months off to figure out the issues. At the moment, he stands against both parties. He says he'd cut the deficit and make old folks with money pay for their medicine, otherwise he says, he'd lead the country. It seems to be enough for one voter in three such is the extent of the despair with the two ancient parties that plagues the whole country.

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