Best kind of billionaire, Perot wasn’t eccentric by our standards
H. Ross Perot, who died Tuesday at 89 at his home in Dallas, was the best kind of billionaire — and one who might be remembered as a role model for other tycoons seeking political power in the United States.
Many Americans would be skeptical of the suggestion that’s a good thing. Wealthy elites have always enjoyed disproportionate power in our society, and Perot’s bids for the presidency in 1992 and 1996 arguably encouraged them to be less circumspect about their political ambitions.
Perot’s first bid, in particular, upended assumptions about the American electorate. The businessman was not a traditional candidate, or an ideal one, by his own assessment. He ran as an independent in 1992, thus eschewing the advantages a party might have provided his campaign. And he suspended his campaign in July only to jump back into the race in October, several weeks before the election.
The hoi polloi didn’t punish Perot for any of this. He won nearly 20 percent of the popular vote, arguably ensuring the election of Republican George H.W. Bush’s Democratic challenger, Bill Clinton.
That was the best showing by an independent or third-party candidate since 1912, when Theodore Roosevelt ran under the “Bull Moose” banner after becoming disenchanted with Republican incumbent, William Howard Taft. And Roosevelt was, of course, a former president. Perot might have helped inspire other nontraditional candidates for president such as billionaire Tom Steyer, who on Tuesday announced his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, or Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks, who has openly considered running as an independent in 2020.
President Donald Trump, for
that matter, is among the Americans who responded warmly to Perot’s anti-establishment message in the 1990s. In 2000, in fact, Trump considered running for president on the Reform Party ticket, as the businessman from Texas did in 1996.
But Texans have a slightly different perspective on Texarkana-born Perot, who launched his career in business in Dallas in the 1950s following his service in the U.S. Navy.
“Ross Perot will rightfully be remembered for many things: business genius, philanthropic giant, American patriot, presidential candidate,” tweeted state Rep. Chris Turner, D-Grand Prairie.
Turner highlighted the fact that Perot spearheaded the push for public education reform in the 1980s, after then-Gov. Mark White appointed him to chair a select committee on the subject.
The work Perot did in that capacity — and the no-pass, no-play edict that came down — had an impact on the entire state.
It’s also notable that White would have enlisted Perot’s help in the first place.
“Understand that, in 1983, Perot had not yet run for president twice or become a not-entirely-complimentary household word,” noted then-Lt. Gov. Bill Hobby in his memoir, years later. “He was still just a Dallas billionaire, a Republican and a successful entrepreneur who had created Electronic Data Systems.”
As a candidate for president in 1992, Perot saw his money as a tool that enabled him to buy blocks of airtime, which he used to explain his views on politics, the economy, and the problems with the two-party system.
Trump, by contrast, invoked his personal wealth as proof of his business acumen, during his campaign rallies in 2016 — many of which were broadcast to the nation by cable news executives concerned about ratings.
The Washington Post, in its obituary, summarized Perot as an “eccentric billionaire who made two independent runs for president.” That isn’t inaccurate, exactly, but it’s not how Texans would describe Perot, because he wasn’t particularly eccentric by our standards.
Perot was a Texan who had the means to serve others, and did so — as a sailor, as the chair of the state’s Select Committee on Public Education, and as a nontraditional candidate for president in the 1990s.