Perot Takes a Walk

By Laurence I. Barrett

Ross Perot's aura of cranky independence and his refusal to be bound by familiar candidate-craft made him attractive, at first, to voters weary of politicos from central casting. But those same qualities, carried to excess, barred the Texas billionaire from expanding his astonishingly strong start into a durable effort. When he fled the field last week, Perot explained his retreat the way he had justified his invasion in February -- just doing his public duty. Then, in the face of charges that he was deserting the volunteers he had mobilized, he offered to construct a third force that would exert leverage on the major parties.

Gerald Rafshoon, a Carter White House alumnus who served briefly as a media adviser, left the organization believing that "Perot has made it a cult of personality and has a messianic vision of himself." But Perot did make one important concession to convention when he hired two experienced handlers in early June to run his campaign. Ed Rollins had directed Ronald Reagan's 1984 campaign, and Hamilton Jordan had managed Jimmy Carter's efforts in 1976 and '80. Their mission was to convert Perot's feisty guerrilla operation into a force capable of waging a general election campaign.

From the beginning, Perot chafed at the arrangement. Rollins, in charge of day-to-day operations, drafted an expansive budget of $150 million, including a direct-mail campaign and broadcast advertising. But Perot's two longtime business associates, Tom Luce and Morton Meyerson, decided that it would be prudent if they, rather than Rollins and Jordan, presented the spending plan to Perot. Luce feared a volcanic reaction from the boss and wanted to spare the new recruits.

Perot promptly cut it in half anyway. He balked at direct mail, for instance. You mean, he said, the kind of junk I throw away? Perot also recoiled at the idea of polling. That's what ordinary candidates do, he said; I don't need it. Despite that opposition, Rollins took on a pollster and labeled the effort "market research."

The biggest dispute was over broadcast advertising. Jordan, in charge of strategy, wanted to get started quickly. Perot approved some preliminary work but deferred any final decisions. He had made his initial splash on TV talk shows and insisted that he could continue to communicate that way for free. The argument that he had to reach a much broader audience left him cold.

Media coverage had already moved from its gee-whiz phase to the relentless scrutiny that new candidates always suffer. I've hired all you guys, Perot complained last month, and now I'm getting a lousy press. His way of dealing with that was to carp about criticism and Republican "dirty tricks" rather than take initiatives that command positive attention. In early July, with the campaign sagging, Jordan confronted Perot. It isn't working, the veteran told the novice. Unless you let us make some basic changes, I'll quit. Perot wished Jordan well and said he should leave anytime he wished. Outbluffed, Jordan retreated to his office and did nothing.

Rollins then took his turn at facing down Perot. It's time to make some decisions, Rollins argued, time to define yourself in voters' minds before your rivals and the press do the job their way. Perot put him off. The deal breaker from Rollins' viewpoint was Perot's dismissal of Hal Riney, whose firm Rollins had retained to create TV commercials. Perot thought Riney's fees far too high. Why should I spend $100,000 to shoot a single ad, Perot demanded, when I can get as much free time on talk shows as I want?

The reasons for Rollins' and Jordan's sense of urgency were obvious. Starting in mid-June, the growth of Perot's support stalled, then turned downward. In a TIME/CNN survey conducted on June 3 and 4, Perot led his rivals with 37%. Five weeks later, in a TIME/CNN poll conducted just before the Democratic National Convention, Perot got 26%.

At a time when Perot should have been enhancing the electorate's picture of him, his message stagnated. What did get through to the public was largely negative. Tough press accounts of Perot's business practices, particularly his use of private investigators, made an impression. So did the constant assertion that Perot lacked a program to flesh out his promise of "action, action, action." When asked if "the lack of detail in Perot's proposals for solving the country's problems" worried them, 61% of voters said yes.

"When is it going to be fun again?" Perot asked his advisers several times. The intensity of criticism was clearly getting to Perot. Instead of fun, every maneuver seemed to cause new pain. His policy advisers finally crafted a fiscal program incorporating his ideas about reducing the federal deficit. It contained such an austere mix of spending cuts and tax increases that Perot realized it would be hazardous to his political health to adopt it. If I do the right thing, he complained, I lose. "Do I change my position?"

Last Wednesday morning, a mediation attempt by Luce having failed, Rollins quit. Jordan was named the sole manager, and Luce announced that the campaign would continue. In fact, Perot had been thinking for a day or two about withdrawing but told no one. Perot canceled two appearances scheduled for later in the week and took counsel with himself. That night Perot met with Luce and Meyerson. Though they talked for an hour, Perot's mind was already made up. Meyerson made the case for fighting on. "This is what I'm going to do," Perot replied. "I'm going to break it off." The campaign had brutalized him. To wage the flat-out drive necessary to give him a shot at winning would demand more money and emotional energy than Perot chose to spend. The main question was how to explain it, particularly to the hundreds of thousands of volunteers who had invested their own sweat -- and in some cases cash -- getting Perot's name on state ballots by means of petition drives.

In his Thursday morning announcement, Perot said that because "the Democratic Party has revitalized itself," he no longer could hope for a clear victory in November. Thus the election would be decided in the House of ; Representatives. That, he said, "would be disruptive to the country." Anyway, he continued, the outpouring of volunteer support for his candidacy had already accomplished its mission. The major-party candidates "are basically focused totally on the things that so concerned" voters demanding change.

In fact, the Perot camp had realized for weeks that a three-way race could push the decision into the House and discussed that possibility. Further, Bill Clinton's pitch and program today differ only in nuance from what he and some of the other Democrats were saying as early as January, before Perot promised to wage "a world-class campaign" if volunteers succeeded in their petition drives.

He made a more revealing comment when asked at his press conference what had gone through his mind the last day. "I'm an engineer. I just rationally looked at the facts . . . You don't make good decisions with emotions." Like the good businessman he is, Perot calculated the cost-benefit ratio and found the bottom line wanting. His mind-set is different from that of a seasoned politician, who knows campaigns often encounter ambushes and that persistence under attack is a cardinal virtue. A disillusioned Perot worker in San Francisco, Ivan Sharpe, said, "He probably doesn't deserve the presidency. Every presidential candidate has to run the press gauntlet. It's a way of testing them." Sharpe's bitterness was widely shared. In a TIME/CNN poll taken after Perot's pullout, 62% of his supporters felt he had let them down, and only 17% believed he had told the real reasons for quitting. But those familiar with the Perot biography should not have been totally surprised. Perot has a history of cutting his losses when a situation no longer pleases him. He sought an early release from the Navy. When the sale of his company, Electronic Data Systems, to General Motors failed to give him the role he sought, he left.

Yet last week, in a confusing tease, he did not totally abandon the effort he had launched with his hyperactive mouth. In a dozen states where petitions are still circulating, he urged his volunteers to continue to work. In New York, by coincidence, the process started the same day of Perot's announcement. "We're moving ahead as if the press conference hadn't occurred," said Ida Lewis, the committee's spokeswoman. In Rochester, where the Perot movement has been particularly strong, its steering committee voted to organize a letter-writing campaign urging Perot to resume his campaign. Said county chairman Chris Sardone: "I'm not sure what Mr. Perot is telling us."

Because many of his centurions shared that uncertainty, Perot went on the Larry King Live show Friday night to urge them to "stay the course as a united team." To what end? Perot sketched a vague but grandiose scenario in which his movement would exert "enormous leverage" not only on the presidential candidates but on nominees for Congress as well. If those candidates fail to toe a line Perot has yet to define, his followers would exact retribution at the polls.

Talk of converting the movement into a durable third-party effort had already cropped up in a few local organizations. And if some activists felt betrayed by his noncandidacy, many Perot supporters still seemed intrigued. The latest TIME/CNN poll found that 23% of registered voters would still pull the Perot lever if he remained on the ballot in their states.

When asked to choose only between George Bush and Bill Clinton, those who had been for Perot favor the Democrat by a 2-to-1 ratio. But that finding is probably ephemeral. The Democrats' convention gave the Clinton-Gore ticket a large boost. Polling numbers measuring the head-to-head contest will not take on real significance again until after the Republican National Convention in August.

By that time, most of those who have supported Perot may have migrated to Bush or Clinton. But the testy Texan may still be more than a footnote in political history. If nothing else, he provided a showcase in which voters could display their discontent with the status quo. Even last week, with Clinton bathed in favorable attention, the dyspepsia was strong. In the TIME/ CNN poll, 55% of all the voters -- and 76% of Perot's fans -- said they were dissatisfied with the field. That, along with many indicators, demonstrated that 1992 could have been a magic year for an independent candidate. But to have had a shot, that rebel would have needed more resilience than Ross Perot possesses.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: From polls taken for TIME/CNN by Yankelovich Clancy Shulman.

CAPTION: A CHALLENGER'S RISE AND FALL

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE

CREDIT: From a telephone poll of 500 registered voters taken for TIME/CNN on July 16 by Yankelovich Clancy Shulman. Sampling error is plus or minus 4%

Includes 113 registered voters who had planned to vote for Perot. Sampling error is plus or minus 9%

CAPTION: % of Perot voters who would vote for $

With reporting by Ann Blackman/Washington, Ratu Kamlani/New York and Richard Woodbury/Dallas