Memorandum To Perot Supporters

By Henry Grunwald

Frankly, my heart doesn't bleed for you. You should have known better.

You should have known not only that Ross Perot, for all his verbal machismo, has always walked away from fights once they got too tough; that he seemed to have delusions of grandeur, fed by our curious habit of treating successful entrepreneurs as geniuses; that in politics he was both amazingly naive and obnoxiously arrogant; that he promised to fix everything without spelling out what he would do and how.

You were his dupes. To be charitable, perhaps he was his own dupe.

There was something else, much more important, you should have known: that in a democracy, crises aren't resolved by men on horseback, even if they are from Texas and carry PCs in their saddlebags. Often the cry for leadership is an excuse for civic laziness, for not taking responsibility.

All this still matters, despite Perot's exit. As they are all saying now, including George Bush and Bill Clinton, your anger over our national mess is a source of political energy that should be harnessed, a message that must be heard.

But is your anger aimed at the proper targets? The Washington gridlock you so rightly condemn isn't only the fault of greedy, comfortably entrenched politicians. It is also your fault, if you have ever deliberately voted for one party in the White House and for the other in Congress in order to dilute their powers. Your complaint that politicians don't listen to the people is wrong; they listen too much. They are only too aware that you won't stand for unpopular and painful programs, that you won't reward politicians for courage, if it hurts.

Perot has bequeathed you an economic program that would hurt. Some of it is good; none of it is new. Its elements have long been advocated by experts and by politicians he reviled. He may yet help sell parts of it from the sidelines. But how many of you would have continued to back him so enthusiastically if he had unveiled that program before rather than after pulling out?

Sure, we must have presidential leadership. But some of the greatest changes in our country were not originated by Presidents; they came about as a result of popular drives that Presidents joined, more or less, to lead. That was true of the antitrust and pure-food revolutions, of the union movement, environmental protection, auto safety, the tax revolt, civil rights, women's rights, gay rights (whatever you may think of them).

So what you need, if you want to change the status quo, is not one Perot but many.

Perots without his megalomania and glibness but with some of his energy, determination and salesmanship. Perots who are willing and able to focus on specific issues and solutions -- some perhaps from his own experts' program.

Find yourselves a Perot to lead a crusade to control entitlements (which Ross himself advocates). That will mean taking on the well-to-do elderly, the most self-centered special-interest group in the country, and persuading them that only by curbing some of their benefits will we reduce the deficit and that this is ultimately in their own interest.

Find a Perot to do battle against the scandal of farm subsidies. Find a Perot to lead a great march against PACS and the legalized corruption that is our present system of campaign financing. Find a Perot to battle the deadly, dug-in educational establishment, to set up tough, general standards, discipline for a longer school year (throw in apprenticeships and national service for good measure).

Find a Perot to lead a campaign against government bureaucracy, which has destroyed more great nations than the fire and sword of invading enemies. Don't accept Ross's implicit message that government can be run like a business. It can't. But it can and must become more decentralized, more productive, more accountable, judged by results.

That should do for openers.

Such separate, targeted movements would not work the instant magic you hoped for. But they could give Presidents, and Congress, a badly needed push and the necessary platforms from which to lead. Change would be painfully slow. But, short of truly major crises like war or the Great Depression (and our problems have not nearly approached those dimensions), that is the way change happens in America. No President can be expected to transform the country single- handed. Not even a tyrant could. It will take patience that Perot didn't have. Do you have it?

In the end, don't blame Ross for bugging out. It may be the best and smartest thing he has done since he casually started his strange game. Don't yearn for him to come back, either. It was probably useful that he stirred up the country, but he was dangerous, not because he wanted to be a dictator, although he does seem to have those instincts, but because he spread bad ideas. The notion, for instance, that we can run our affairs by instant electronic plebiscite. We can't without wrecking democracy. Or the notion that, because many candidates don't stick to them anyway, programs don't matter. They do if we want any rational basis for choosing. Or the notion that our problems will be solved easily ("It's simple"). They won't, as his own program demonstrates.

The significant and troubling fact about the Perot phenomenon is that for months you treated him as a savior, not because he had a plan but because he exuded a can-do spirit and little else. So wave goodbye to Ross, and stop waiting for Mr. Goodwrench to fix America. Find and, by all means, goad other, responsible leaders to fix it. And help fix it yourself.