The Ross Perot you don't know

Washington Monthly, May, 1992 by Peter Elkind

On foreign policy, he would try to make the Japanese and Europeans foot the bill for their own defense. He would cut government aid to any developing nation that lacked promise of becoming world class. It would be hard to imagine a better leader in wartime: cutting through red tape to speed industrial production, inspiring workers to accept lower wages while they work overtime for the national good, assigning Boy Scout troops and PTAs to collect scrap rubber and metal for recycling.

But let's not draft him yet. Many elements of Perot's character are poorly suited to a peacetime presidency. He is abrasive, turning opponents into implacable enemies. His ego is unaccustomed to compromise. And most importantly, he has a tendency to act too boldly-like "an unguided missile," Molly Ivins once wrote. In search of the flashy project that will create great change and galvanize public attention, he can do a fair amount of damage.

A few years back, after cruising drug-infested South Dallas neighborhoods in a police car, Perot proposed his own solution: The city should cordon off sections of the area and send in hundreds of cops for a house-to-house, person-to-person confiscation of drugs and weapons. Under the Constitution, that's illegal; it's also inhuman. But Perot saw it as the simplest way to free the neighborhood from crime.

That same simplicity of vision guided Perot's mission to free the two EDS employees imprisoned in Iran-a rescue mission remembered as a brilliant success. Yet, to free the jailed pair, Perot's commandos orchestrated a riot that sprang 11,000 people-including murderers and rapists-from a Teheran prison. The mission also violated both U.S. and international law.

It is the fatal flaw of the pragmatist: Obsessed with blazing the shortest path to a solution, he's willing to sacrifice as "details" those safeguards that keep government from abusing its power. Such conviction is compelling in Citizen Perot. It could be-and has been-frightening in a leader.

In 1986, Perot told a black-tie audience gathered to honor him that he had once dreamed of being the beautiful pearl in an oyster. Instead, he decided, his lot in life was to be the grain of sand that irritates the oyster to produce the pearl. Although the candidate seems to have forgotten his own insight in the "Draft Perot" frenzy, it captures why we should hope that Ross Perot does not become president. His value to the nation is the purity of his opinion, his radical pragmatism. He can serve America best as an irritant.