Perot-Noia

By LAURENCE I. BARRETT WASHINGTON

Ross Perot likes to punctuate his crisp prescriptions for complex problems by eyeballing the TV camera sternly and intoning, "It's that simple." Yet little about Perot himself matches that terse description. As his bizarre charges of Republican dirty tricks detonated across the political landscape last week, the dominant facet of Perot's makeup became increasingly clear: he is an incurable conspiracy monger who espies plotters in every thicket and easily persuades himself that some of his wildest suspicions are true.

Perot provided ample evidence of his eccentricities as he approached the campaign's last days determined to make a good showing and possibly overtake the adversary he heartily dislikes: George Bush. His performance in the debates was drawing back many early fans who had defected when Perot pulled out of the contest on July 16. His rationale for withdrawal at the time: the Democratic Party had "revitalized" itself, and he feared his continued candidacy might cause an electoral-college deadlock.

On the eve of the election, however, he changed his story. Appearing on CBS's 60 Minutes, Perot said he quit the race because he feared Bush operatives planned to smear his daughter Carolyn by publicizing a fraudulent photograph of her. While he did not describe it, others said Perot believed the photo depicted a lesbian act. He also suspected a plot to disrupt somehow Carolyn's wedding ceremony in August. Nor was that all. Even after he withdrew, he said he was told of plans to tap his office phones, perhaps with a view toward sabotaging his business dealings.

Asked to substantiate the charges, he admitted, "I can't prove any of it today." Yet he went on to claim that "this was the Republican key people and their opposition research teams. This was run at the top." Perot's ostensible sources were unnamed Republican friends and one Scott Barnes, a notorious conspiracy-theory peddler. Apparently Perot himself initially believed the threat about wiretapping enough to go to the Dallas police, offering technical assistance for an undercover operation to catch the criminal. Despite his close ties to the police, he was turned down. The Texan did, however, persuade the FBI to launch a fruitless investigation.

When his allegations caused a sensation, Perot backed off, castigating reporters for what he called "your twisted, distorted stories." Yet it was Perot himself who made the disclosures and who talked up the CBS program at campaign stump speeches in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Striking back in an attempt to crumble Perot's support, White House Press Secretary Marlin Fitzwater told reporters Perot was "a paranoid person who has delusions." That pop-psych diagnosis was motivated by politics, of course, but it also squared with Perot's long history of obsession with plots. In one of his half-hour commercials, the Texan revived a claim that he had been the target of five armed terrorists hired by North Vietnamese to assassinate him 20 years ago. A single guard dog ostensibly scared the gunmen off his property. Perot never reported the incident to authorities, though he has frequently complained about minor incursions on his heavily guarded estate. He still refuses to identify the single witness who, he maintains, unleashed the hound. The chief of his private security force at the time says the incident never occurred.

Then there was the alleged plot against his life by drug lords. In a separate controversy, his long feud with Washington over its handling of the MIA issue, Perot accused Richard Armitage, Assistant Secretary of Defense in the Reagan Administration, of a nefarious cover-up. In running his successful computer empire, Perot occasionally subjected employees to polygraph tests. Last week seven defectors from his volunteer network charged that they had been targets of improper credit investigations. This pattern is familiar to those who worked with Perot long before he grew politically ambitious. "He keeps so much in his head," says a former business associate of Perot's. "You can never figure what he's up to. He says someone called him ((to supply intelligence)), or that he saw somebody, but there's no way of confirming half of it."

As Perot rose in the polls last spring, the press stopped treating him as a novelty and began to examine his record. Perot's pat response, instead of addressing the critical stories or shrugging them off, was to blame "the Republican Party dirty-tricks committee." But Perot's real problem is with the way America goes about electing its President, a rigorous (and yes, sometimes punishing) process that tests the candidates' ideas and mettle. Any candidate for high office, particularly one who is new to politics, must expect his record and statements to be scrutinized. Perot decided to circumvent part of that route by skipping the primaries, but he still found the inquiry intolerable, which may be the main reason why he left the race last summer.

Nonetheless, Perot retained a substantial following even while his image as a can-do truth teller came into question. One reason is a broad loss of confidence in both major parties. That credibility gap has been growing for years, and the punching match this season between Bush and Bill Clinton has widened it. State Department officials did, after all, troll through passport files on Clinton -- and his mother -- looking for information to use against the Democrat. That the Republicans undertook so mindless an excursion gave a trace of credibility to Perot's latest charges.

Still, the disclosures about Perot's foibles did not disqualify him in the eyes of many voters who were disgusted with politics as usual. With Bush and Clinton dancing around some of the most difficult issues, Perot's mantra about being the only serious reformer in the field got a hearing. And with a fortune to spend on commercials, plus easy access to TV talk shows, Perot never lacked a forum for his views.

Before he dropped out in July, Perot liked to say he "wouldn't give you 3 cents to go up there ((to the White House))." Yet at the same time, he was aiding his "volunteer" movement with heavy subsidies. Even during his hiatus as a noncandidate, Perot's cash kept the organization going. Because he declines to accept federal money, the billionaire can use as much of his own money as he wishes. In the 26 days after he re-entered the race on Oct. 1, he spent $36.7 million, most of it on TV commercials; though the final figures are not in, he outspent both Bush and Clinton on advertising during October.

That Perot could have as much impact as he did, disrupting the rhythm of Campaign '92 virtually at will, is a grim reminder to the major parties that they are vulnerable to well-financed, independent challengers. In the future, a third-party candidate with unlimited resources may not do the Democrats and Republicans the favor of demonstrating to the voters that he may be more fit to be Secretary of Conspiracy Theories than to be President.

With reporting by Richard Woodbury with Perot