Stop Perot. Now.
Stop Perot. Now. Back in August, you will recall, Ross Perot, ostentatiously concerned to make the two-party system work, issued another peep from his magic flute and summoned a zombie-like...
...Voters are disgusted with politics, a phenomenon reflected in those "high quality polls" he likes to read, the polls whose questions are rigged to generate but one correct response: Damn right, I'm disgusted...
...Every one of these ideas is terrible, incidentally...
...he is (gasp...
...The Republican Congress was elected last November in a rare seismic shift of national political alignments...
...You'll hear about "a new party" called, oops, the "Reform Party...
...Were congressional "inaction" truly the burr under Ross's saddle, he would run "Independence Party" candidates in legislative races next year, attempting to elect his own "reform" congressmen and senators...
...But come on, there's no focused mass disgust with the Republican party "out there...
...A history-making achievement, by ordinary standards...
...Can Perot get the requisite 900,000 registered voter signatures-or 90,000 new registrants-in California by October 24...
...He probably cannot legally finance his new party all by his billionaire lonesome, and he won't get the $60 million in general campaign funds that the federal government grants to established major parties...
...off the front pages...
...That's what this Independence party presidential campaign will mean: that the conservative Republican revolution is illegitimate...
...To wit, reduced to its essence: Unless the Republican party manages to assume dictatorial power in Washington and ram through Perot's incoherent, gruel-thin agenda by Christmas, he will blow up that party's presidential campaign next year...
...His selfishness is undisciplined by actual administrative or representative responsibility...
...Surely Larry King would be delighted to serve as host...
...True, some voters are holding ultimate judgment in abeyance, waiting for next year to see how things all turn out...
...Colin Powell says Perot has added "a little measure of possibility to the independent route," a statement that by itself raises questions about the general's seriousness of purpose where presidential politics is concerned...
...A legally restricted four-month federal campaign season...
...His challenge must be met directly, his balloon punctured for good...
...And this and that and the other," as Perot told King with his customary eloquence, "et cetera, et cetera, et cetera...
...of course he has, he's Ross Perot...
...You'd have thought another Republican victory next November would fix this problem quite nicely...
...Thanks, pal...
...It simply won't do for Republican spokesmen to whimper like jilted schoolgirls at prom time about how Perot has betrayed them...
...Working professional politicians, well equipped to recognize megalomania when they see it, hate Perot's guts, of course-almost all of them...
...This is the big, important agenda the Republican Congress is ignoring while it busies itself with tiny stuff, like undoing the New Deal...
...Here's a suggestion...
...There is one Republican politician, an historian by training, who is uniquely qualified to explain why, in a non-parliamentary republic of separated powers, American politics tends naturally and valuably to divide itself into two parties, not three or more...
...And why and how the Republican party, at least, is doing its part of this job so well, in tune with the wishes of a large plurality of our voting citizens...
...There will be a third presidential aspirant in 1996, after all, his name on all 50 state ballots, the better to siphon a few million clinching "not-Clinton" votes away from the GOP Wanna get involved in the "Independence Party," which will nominate its stooge candidate by "satellite hook-up" from "auditoriums all over the country" next April...
...Completely unwarranted dissatisfaction, let's remember...
...It's to be an independent presidential campaign exclusively...
...This Republican, as it happens, is also the one leading member of his party in Congress who has reacted swiftly and vehemently to Ross Perot's latest folly, calling it "a substantial mistake," and "a fantasy of delusion...
...A total ban on lobbying expenditures...
...And who will be his patsy nominee...
...But not good enough for Mr...
...Guaranteed health and retirement benefits equivalent to those of government staffers...
...Abolition of the electoral college...
...Perot advances the great cause of his own notoriety by encouraging mass dissatisfaction with the post-1994 order, he's encouraging mass dissatisfaction with you...
...Back in August, you will recall, Ross Perot, ostentatiously concerned to make the two-party system work, issued another peep from his magic flute and summoned a zombie-like procession of leading American political figures to prostrate themselves before a poorly attended meeting of his ragtag "United We Stand America" army in Dallas...
...And why those two parties are supposed to reflect each of two general tendencies in public opinion, conservatism and liberalism...
...So never mind the man's ostensible rationale...
...Addressing this disgust apparently involves one thing, mostly: a balanced budget amendment, which failed by one vote in the Senate earlier this year...
...How about a Gingrich-Perot debate on national television...
...He hasn't yet released the full-scale platform he claims to have developed, but on Larry's show last week a few highlights were revealed...
...They"-you know, they-"don't want this to happen...
...But Republicans don't have that luxury...
...Can he replace that sum with contributions from small donors nationwide...
...And so the Unabomber of American politics goes back on Larry King this past Monday with a threat...
...Perot's star in the Third Way galaxy is suddenly eclipsed by the glow of a legitimate contender...
...For which you do not actually need a formal, third-party structure, as Perot himself proved so notably in 1992...
...The truth is simple: This is about Perot, and the satisfaction of his infantile narcissism...
...Please...
...There's precedent for that...
...Good for Newt Gingrich...
...But what's truly striking is how small they are...
...Congressional campaign fundraising restricted to each member's home district...
...Democrats may be pardoned for cooperating in this puerile media guessing game, their glee concealed behind a front of dispassionate analysis...
...Perot isn't saying, except that, barring the reincarnation of Washington or Lincoln, the "Independence" candidate won't be a current member of the Republican or Democratic party...
...David Tell, for the Editors...
...And he won't be "some weirdo," either...
...Perot is not the world's best explainer, but the answer seems to go like this...
...And that's the one thing he's promised not to do...
...He tends to dissolve into humiliated incoherence when knowledgeably contradicted face to face, as Al Gore proved during the 1993 battle over NAFTA...
...Not yet, anyway...
...It is pursuing precisely the promised conservative agenda that produced that shift, against weakly articulated opposition, and with so far stunning success...
...His argument about congressional "failure," in other words, must be demolished...
...Carried to its logical conclusion, Perot's latest exercise of egotism could well seriously derail their revolution, now only six Senate seats and the Oval Office away from filibuster- and veto-proof fruition...
...But don't let the bad guys "bug you on minutiae," says Mr...
...Heads up to the new majority party, now shaping the future of American public policy: Whenever Mr...
...Republicans certainly can't acquiesce in that verdict...
...What a difference a few weeks and a Colin Powell book tour make...
...And he acts on it so freely, too, regularly subordinating the established procedures of American democracy to the demands of his own insatiable vanity...
...Why is it that practically no one in official Washington will come right out and say so...
...But still, they went to touch his garment: Approve us, Ross, approve us...
...Yes, but why...
...It might also have occurred to you that Congress is about to enact a budget plan that redirects 60-plus years of federal social welfare policy, tearing it up root and branch, achieving fiscal balance by 2002 in the process...
...His party "will have a name, it will be a good name, don't worry about that...
...Call Ross's new 800 number...
...Well, well, well...
...Perot is clever, but he's not that smart...
...The newspapers are now full of speculation about the technical how-and-whether of third-party mobilization...
...Voting on weekends...
...And Perot repaid their deference, sort of, dispatching his henchmen to lecture "the volunteers" about the logistical and financial difficulties of creating a third party, and banishing those conventioneers who were determined to pursue the idea to an adjacent hotel...
...Perot says he wants to "restore trust and confidence in government," something he deliberately undermines every time he opens his mouth...
...And there probably won't be, either, unless Republicans fail to rebut Ross Perot's loud claim that there should be...
...Soon...
Vol. 1 • October 1995 • No. 4
