Perot’s gutsy legacy
Nearly three decades ago, a billionaire businessman named H. Ross Perot sought to convince his fellow Americans that his business acumen, his ideas born of experience and the force of his prickly, no-nonsense personality would fix all that was wrong with U.S. politics and government.
Although the Texarkana native once suggested that the theme song for his 1992 presidential campaign ought to be the country classic “Crazy” (written by a fellow Texan named Willie), the diminutive Texan with the high-pitched twang and the ’50s flattop managed to attract more voters than any third-party presidential candidate since Teddy Roosevelt finished second in 1912 on the Progressive ticket.
With his homemade-looking charts decrying the dangers of a bulging national debt, Perot didn’t come close to winning, but he got people talking — and thinking. Perot’s death Tuesday at the age of 89 got us doing the same thing about a gutsy Texas character who had an outsized impact on business, politics and public policy.
Arguably, Perot changed the course of American political history. The votes he lured away from another fellow Texan, incumbent Republican George H.W. Bush, allowed the Democratic nominee, Bill Clinton, to slip into the White House in 1992.
Perot ran again four years later as the nominee of the Reform Party, which he created, but was not a factor in the election. He never ran for office again.
Perot was a Texan, first and foremost (as if anyone who heard him speak had to wonder). In a 2015 interview with the Texarkana Chamber of Commerce (retrieved by KUT-FM’s “Texas Standard”), he proclaimed his lifelong allegiance. “I was Texas-born and Texas-bred and Texarkanaraised,” he said. “and when I die, I’ll be Texas-dead.”
Not only did Perot make his billions in Texas, founding Dallas-based Electronic Data Systems in 1962, almost from the beginning of his career he threw himself into public causes. He was mentioned as a possible GOP gubernatorial candidate in 1971, but said he was too “action-oriented” for public office.
In 1979, Gov. Bill Clements, the state’s first Republican governor since Reconstruction, appointed him to his Texas War on Drugs Committee, which proposed new laws that toughened sentencing.
In 1983, Democratic Gov. Mark White, who unseated Clements, appointed Perot to head the Select Committee on Public Education, whose charge was to define state education policy into the next century.
With characteristic verve and confidence, Perot plunged into the thicket of public-school finance: poorly paid and sometimes poorly prepared teachers, apathetic students and a Texas public gone bonkers over ball games. He wasn’t reluctant to gore sacred cows.
“You go to small towns in West Texas and there just ain’t a whole lot of interest in learning,” he said during a statewide tour, “but there’s a whole lot of interest in what goes on Friday nights.”
His work led to the state’s “no passno play” rule, which kept starting quarterbacks on the sidelines if they didn’t make their grades. It also spurred Texas lawmakers in 1984 to raise education standards, increase teacher salaries and cut class sizes.
Perot gave away much of his money to widely disparate causes and interests. He supported an experimental public school for disadvantaged children in Dallas, flew in supplies for American prisoners of war in North Vietnam, and bought 20 Tennessee walking horses, complete with special saddles and bridles, for the New York City Police Department. The millions he donated to schools, hospitals and cultural organizations included $10 million for a stunning new symphony hall in downtown Dallas.
The man from Texarkana was quirky, he was eccentric and not all his ideas worked out the way he hoped. He left his mark, though — on the state he loved, and on the nation. He liked to remind people that eagles don’t flock. Neither did Ross Perot.