Ross Perot's town hall

This is Henry Ross Perot's campaign statement from the 1992 presidential election. Perot ran as an independent against Bill Clinton (who won) and incumbent George Bush. Despite a somewhat chaotic campaign, Perot received 19% of the popular vote, making him the most successful third party candidate since Theodore Roosevelt in 1912.

I admit I was somewhat surprised by “United We Stand”. The book gives a moderate/centrist impression, and is essentially a potpourri of more or less reasonable demands in no particular order of importance. The main issue is the skyrocketing federal debt and various proposals to bring it under control. Immigration is hardly mentioned, and the usual right-wing conspiracy theories about the Federal Reserve and the New World Order are also absent.

This is not how I remember Ross Perot, and judging by Wikipedia, it's not how Americans remember him either. Rather, the Texas billionaire was seen as a dangerous populist demagogue with authoritarian tendencies. Proto-fascist? Perot's peculiar ideas about “Electronic Town Halls” was interpreted as the usual way for a strongman to get his proposals accepted by plebiscite, circumventing the usual checks and balances of the constitution (any constitution). Wiki quotes Perot saying that the Founders would have devised a very different constitution if alive today, due to the impact of technological changes on society. Perot was also interpreted as an economic nationalist and isolationist. After the elections, Perot did become a prominent opponent of NAFTA, warning that it would destroy American jobs.

If read carefully, the centralizing tendency can be seen even in “United We Stand”. Perot is obviously opposed to state rights, and wants the president to be directly elected by the people. He comes close to proposing single payer health care, and seems to support the idea of an Annual Guaranteed Income. Perot also calls for a federally centralized war on drugs, and half-jokingly refers to the official responsible as “federal Drug Czar”!

In my view, Ross Perot represented a budding opposition to economic and political globalization, which was still in its early stages when he ran for president. Under President Bush, the United States had been hit by a recession similar to the 2008 “finance crisis”, and Perot appealed to sections of the White middle and working classes suffering the consequences. He seems to have draw support in equal measure from Democrats, Republicans and independents. What made Perot sound ominous was, I suppose, his thinly veiled calls for strongman rule and open disrespect for the Constitution in its present form. A benign interpretation is that Ross Perot was a De Gaulle or Berlusconi, a more malign one is that the computer wizard from Texarkana was the American Caesar trying to cross the Rubicon (or Potomac).

H Ross Perot eventually failed, and instead we got BAU under several Democratic and Republican administrations. However, it seems history is about to repeat itself. The new Perot on the block is, of course, Donald Trump…