Ross Perot

(adapted from The Buying of the President, Charles Lewis and the Center for Public Integrity, 1996)

Henry Ross Perot perceives himself as a great American hero and says it is his personal mission to ensure that anyone can achieve the "American Dream." From his persistent search for missing MIA/POWs in Vietnam to the 1993 NAFTA debates, Perot has cast himself in the role of America's savior, using his vast fortune to do so. Running for president in 1992, the Texas billionaire spent $65 million of his own money. He has said he would do it again, grudgingly, only if Bill Clinton and Congress failed to meet the needs of the country.

"I've got to honestly believe that's the only reason I would want to go serve a hitch in hell, and that's, you know, the kindest word you could put on it in terms of being in public life," Perot has said.

A Unique Perspective

Perot has a unique perspective about public life. He has been a Washington player dating back to the Nixon White House. In many cases, Perot's own business dealings have been the special interests that influenced his Washington game. Despite his populist rhetoric against Washington in 1992, Perot has long been a part of the money and politics mercenary culture that exists today.

In 1974, the same year of the Watergate-inspired reforms, Perot contributed $90,000 to each of the major political parties. Between 1979 and 1991, he contributed $51,000 to the Republican Party. Perot has sailed on the presidential yacht, eaten dinner at the White House and lobbied both the president and Congress. As TIME magazine reported, "He has backslapped and arm-twisted with the best of them."

Perot didn't always have a lot of money. In 1956, he married Margot Birmingham and became a salesman for IBM. As the now-famous story goes, in 1962 he borrowed $1,000 from Margot to start a one-man data processing company, Electronic Data Systems. Six years later, Perot was a multimillionaire.

EDS's first big contract was with the federal government. In 1965, when the United States began providing Medicare and Medicaid, EDS marketed a computerized system for paying the claims. Perot's profits soared for the first time that year. The Nixon White House furthered the company's success by securing Perot another $62,500 contract, without competitive bidding, even though Perot's price was $10,000 over the spending limit. Nixon also helped Perot escape accusations by the Social Security Administration that EDS had over-charged for processing Medicare claims.

Generous To Nixon

Perot was equally generous to Nixon. In 1968, he paid the salaries of ten EDS employees while they worked on Nixon's campaign. A year later, he spent $1 million on newspaper ads and a thirty-minute television program to generate support for the president's Vietnam policy. In 1972, Perot gave $200,000 to Richard Nixon's re-election campaign."

Nixon is not the only politician with whom Perot has worked in an attempt to benefit his interests. In 1975, Perot almost succeeded in rigging the federal tax bill to get himself a $15 million tax break. He contributed more than $27,000 to twelve members of the House Ways and Means Committee responsible for the bill, according to the Wall Street Journal. Perot would have reportedly received "an unheard-of capital-loss carry back." While twenty of the thirty-eight committee members voted for the measure, it was removed on the House floor. Still, it was "a coup most lobbyists only dream about," according to TIME's Margaret Carlson.

This episode was revisited in 1993 during Perot's NAFTA debate with Al Gore on CNN. Perot lobbied intensely against NAFTA. The vice president accused Perot of lobbying Congress for favorable tax legislation, and Perot responded with, "You're lying." But the Wall Street Journal editor who broke the story in 1975 said on NBC's "Today" Show after the NAFTA debate that he remembered Perot had "hired every lobbyist in town he could get, including a former IRS commissioner."

Perot found himself in the midst of another kind of controversy in 1984, when he sold EDS, the company he had founded on the largesse of a federal contract, to General Motors for $2.5 billion. He continued to serve on the corporation's board of directors until GM forced Perot's removal in 1986. Perot struck a deal with GM that in exchange for a $700 million buyout, he would leave the company and agree not to compete for profits with EDS for three years. By 1992, Perot was estimated to be the 13th wealthiest man in America with a net worth of about $3 billion.

Running In '92

Perot returned to the Washington scene in stunning fashion in 1992 with his presidential run. Perot's campaign committee, Perot '92, managed to get his name on the ballot in all 50 states -- no small accomplishment given the propensity of the major parties to monopolize the process. According to Herb Asher, a political science professor at Ohio State University, Perot drew equally from Clinton and Bush supporters. But many pundits assert that Perot's campaign sufficiently detracted from Bush's supporters to help President Clinton with the election.

After dropping out in July and reentering the race in October, Perot won 19 percent of the vote in the general election, garnering twenty million ballots. He did remarkably well in Maine, winning 30 percent of the vote, and in other states like New Hampshire with 23 percent, 22 percent in Texas and 21 percent in California.

What is little known about Perot's campaign is that he received more than $190,000 in campaign contributions from individuals. He also violated Federal Election Commission rules by misreporting twelve contributions totaling more than $10,000. Perot paid a $65,000 penalty for this infraction.

The most enduring tangible outcome of Perot's 1992 campaign was the creation of his political movement, United We Stand America (UWSA). UWSA's agenda usually echoes Perot's campaign: the deficit, term limits and tax reform. Perot has spent $10 million on the group and his picture appears in every newsletter above his column. The group has had its ups and downs with Perot.

At UWSA's Dallas convention in August 1995, Perot urged his supporters to "get to work" within the system. Surveys had shown that most of his followers thought he could do more not running for president. The Washington Times reported Perot saying, "(I)f the Republicans and Democrats do 'what ordinary citizens want done in this country,' there will be no need for a third party and no political future for him." Then on September 25, apparently less than satisfied with the performance of the Republicans in Congress and the Democrat in the White House, Perot announced an effort to get a new party -- the Reform Party -- on the ballot in all fifty states, at the same time saying on CNN's "Larry King Live," "It's nothing to do with me."

Of course, this came from a shrewd, unpredictable man who keeps a copy of a favorite book (for which he wrote the forward) on a shelf in his office: Leadership Secrets of Attila The Hun.