Analysis: Ross Perot’s story is a useful reminder that norm-shattering, cult-of-personality politics is not an exclusively recent phenomenon
Ross Perot died early Tuesday morning at 89, an event that surely left many Americans with an embarrassed thought:The contrast between the quietude of Perot’s last aging years and the blaring trumpets of his 20th-century business and political career is so stark it takes some effort now to recall how large this cocksure Texas bantam once loomed.A touch of exaggeration is standard in obituaries, but it doesn’t take much in Perot’s case.
poster="http://v.politico.com/images/1155968404/201907/1703/1155968404_6057099455001_6057103821001-vs.jpg?pubId=1155968404"Perot said cozy, insider self-dealing had corrupted Washington and was screwing over average Americans, and he complained that free-trade agreements such as NAFTA were raw deals for workers and the economy. This message from 1992 is a linear ancestor of the one that echoes to some degree in both parties and vaulted Trump to the presidency in 2016.
Clinton paid a price for the Perot phenomenon. When the Texan ran again in 1996 as the founder of the Reform Party, he never factored heavily in the outcome but still commanded 8 percent of the vote, leaving Clinton capped at 49 percent. While Clinton is sometimes lauded as the most agile natural politician of modern times, he never won majority support in a presidential election.
Conspiracy theories were always part of his appeal, as with his claim that the first Bush administration was suppressing knowledge of POWs still alive in Vietnam.
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