Editorials/Just Whistle/The Real Enemy
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
EDITORIALS Just Whistle by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. On the day that the morning news shows broadcast word of H. Ross Perot's historic leap to the top of the presidential polls, there was an...
...At presidential debates, while Bush and Perot sputter, cool Bill will wail or bee-bop...
...He can play at parades, political rallies, and on behalf of local officeholders...
...All other third-party candidates were stupendous ax-grinders...
...I think it can be said that, in this presidential campaign, the less we know about a candidate the more we like him...
...After all, it is an odd year...
...Perot, and what I know about him is his personal wealth and little else...
...Photo ops will show him lulling street gangs into serenity with his groovy instrument...
...Admittedly, this time the scoundrel sweating it out over at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue is not a "crook" or a liar or a killer of innocent Vietnamese...
...They say that music is a universal language, and my Adapted from RET's weekly Washington Times column syndicated by King Features...
...Public moodiness and shaky numbers are not for me...
...That will warm up the crowd, and when the press's questioning begins, Boy Clinton can bring out his sax...
...Unfortunately for Mr...
...Every other third-party presidential candidate has at least been a politician...
...In 1948 Henry Wallace and Strom Thurmond based their candidacies on left-wing radicalism and states' rights, respectively...
...True, these grisly phenomena make Hollywood a surprisingly unhappy place, but now there is a deeper cause for angst...
...Certainly I like Mr...
...The polling data, we are told, favor Mr...
...In 1912 Theodore Roosevelt based his candidacy on a well-developed body of ideas called "progressivism...
...Hey, ho, we've cornered another President in the White House...
...The 1968 presiden(continued on page 14) 12 The American Spectator August 1992 tial campaign of George Wallace was based on populism and race...
...Bill Clinton can be the first to play a musical instrument into the White House...
...Even John Anderson's 1980 candidacy was based on a body of ideas best characterized as Country Club Republicanism...
...All have based their candidacies on a deep vein of sentiment and, occasionally, ideas...
...Perot is either—aside from rich...
...Hollywood's eminentoes comprise a relatively small community—perhaps a thousand or so wheeler-dealers, writers, and winsome faces—and now someone has ratted...
...Perot has risen faster than any third party candidate in history, and he has risen higher than any third party candidate in over fifty years...
...When I am forced to choose between T here is trouble in Hollywood...
...Consider Governor Bill Clinton...
...Nor do I refer to the sickly panhandlers, whole families of whom clutter the streets, nor the street hoodlums...
...Perot boasts that he is not, and that he has no ax to grind...
...On the day that the morning news shows broadcast word of H. Ross Perot's historic leap to the top of the presidential polls, there was an excitement fevering the reporters that I had not witnessed since the thrilling era of Watergate...
...H. Ross Perot, and it is not clear what Mr...
...advice to Governor Clinton is that he emulate Harry Truman's 1948 whistle-stop campaign, and at every stop just whistle...
...His voice has suffered horribly during the campaign, and what he has said has done him no good...
...In this year of public anger, we have been told many times that presidential candidates "lie and cheat" their way into the White House...
...Perot, it is not clear what the public is angry about, or what they would have him do to dispel their bilious mood...
...Perot over President Bush, but the polling data were wrong in 1980, misleading for months in 1988, and completely erroneous in the British elections as recently as last April...
...What is more he has no party and, thus far, no candidacy, and he is not even a politician...
...I do not refer to the recent Los Angeles riots, whose origins remain the staple of prolonged media meditations and whose burned-out buildings crumble on every block...
...T he Perot candidacy, we are told, is based on anger—not his but the public's...
...In fact, it is not clear what the President is, but he is getting nailed by Mr...
...We know a great deal about him, and he finished a distant third in the Washington Post–ABC Poll...
...How about one who plays the saxophone...
...My advice to him is that he say not one more word until November 3. Playing the saxophone on the Arsenio Hall show the other night was an excellent start...
...Political analysts tell us that the American people are impatient with candidates who "play politics as usual" with the voters...
Vol. 25 • August 1992 • No. 8
