Perot as The Penguin is, obviously, a reach. He may be closer in spirit (if not in perfidy) to the gazillionaire Batvillain Max Shreck, having insinuated himself profitably into affairs of state and made himself useful to Republican administrations for a quarter century, receiving in return only a few small concessions (his own airport, for example). And grateful personal notes from a certain vice president: “Dear Ross … I was very touched by your call(s) about my kids.”
With the release of that note, a day after Bush seemed just, well, ticked off to learn that Perot had been investigating his kids, the Texas proto-politician was able to deflect some serious heat and make the president seem silly. But, one wonders: how is it that all this slimy stuff-about Bush’s sons, certain Pentagon officials and assorted business rivals-always seems to land on Ross Perot’s unsolicited? Does sewer maintenance come with the territory billionaire? The answer may have more to do with when you’re a Perot’s flirtation with the conspiracy-addled sorts who were operating at full blast in the mid-1980s, retailing stories that linked missing POWs in Southeast Asia to CIA drug running to arms shipments for the Nicaraguan contras–to the vice president himself (and to his sons, at least one of whom was “mentioned” about that time in secret testimony before a Senate subcommittee by a disreputable drug-cartel source). Perot’s susceptibility to triple-canopied conspiracy chat and covert operators (like private investigators and former Green Berets) remains one of the more interesting character questions of this campaign. How gullible is this guy? How vindictive? How stable?
This is serious business, a legitimate area of journalistic inquiry, and Perot was able to divert attention from it-and onto the alleged Republican “dirty tricks” operation-a little too easily last week. He was aided and abetted in this by the president’s men, who continued to work overtime making fools of themselves. The Bush campaign, like the Bush presidency, seems frazzled, out of control; there is no central strategy, just a lot of limbs twitching. “I’d feel a lot better about our prospects if we were able to roll out the sort of carefully orchestrated 90-day strategy that Perot says we’re doing against him,” says one Bush aide. “But we have trouble orchestrating press conferences these days. We’re in such lousy shape that we’re helping make Perot’s case for him by having all our people pile on. “Indeed, if there were a coherent Bush strategy, the surrogates might have been told to take the week off and leave Perot-for the moment, at least-to the mercies of the Big Media, now beginning to perform their standard character frisk (without much help from GOP basement trolls, if the truth be told).
Instead, Perot was able to duke it out on “Larry King Live” with Rich Bond, the Republican national chairman, in unbidden and ranting like an outpatient. Perot decked him. The next morning, on the “Today” show, poor Bond tried to be terrified by the prospect of Perot in charge of the FBI, the CIA and the IRS, and Katie Couric decked him again: “We’ve heard that from Vice President Quayle.” The award for Surrogate of the Week, though, had to go to drug czar Bob Martinez, who interrupted his busy war against narcotics to lambaste Perot (“He apparently regards the Bill of Rights as an antique inconvenience”) before the United States Conference of Mayors, an effort received in stony silence. “Thank you for that nonpolitical discourse on drugs in America,” said Boston Mayor Ray Flynn (a Democrat) when the sorry czar ran out of vitriol.
The distemper of the Bush campaign was apparent on the desultory second front of the presidential race last week as well. The administration’s numbers crunchers–OMB Director Richard Darman and chief economist Michael Boskin–were hustled out to demolish Bill Clinton’s earnest new economic plan. This was not an impossible task. The plan, like all plans, has holes. But, as on the Perot front, the surrogates drew more attention to themselves than to the opposition: Darman has presided over a $1 trillion increase in the federal debt. Boskin–a respected academic, once–is now remembered as the salesman for Bush’s shameless “flexible” budget freeze in the 1988 campaign. Such gimmicks and vitriol seem dated, transparent this year.
Actually, the “flexible freeze” was Bush’s second pass at deficit reduction in 1988. Earlier, in New Hampshire, when it seemed his campaign was going down the tubes, Bush announced … a “Leadership Freeze.” That delightful concept was quickly stowed; the management style lingers.
