COLUMN LEFT / ALEXANDER COCKBURN : Perot’s Plan Is There For Us to Find : His soldier-of-fortune connections, his inner-city “drug war” are matters of record.

Those who clamor for Ross Perot to lay out specific policies miss the point. The Texan has now published the justification for his presidential bid in voluminous detail, in a vast document officially known as his financial disclosure statement.

With Perot, the degeneration of American politics is distilled into tragicomic parody with the simple question: Can a billionaire with no party and no stated programs simply buy the presidency?

The Perot campaign, now planning a $20-million advertising campaign to coincide with the Democratic convention, clearly thinks it can. A useful parallel to bear in mind is the history of the Latin word suffragium. In the Roman Republic it meant a vote. In the Roman Empire it meant a favor and, as things went steadily downhill, ended up meaning simply a bribe.

Just as suffragium’s career reflected the increasing weight of money in the Roman political system, so Perot’s initial announcement told us everything we need to know. He would, Perot proclaimed, spend “all the money it takes.” Carve those words on the tombstone of democratic practice. With Ronald Reagan we had the homespun populist backed by others’ billions. With Perot it’s simpler still. His net worth is his message.

There is, of course, plenty still to learn about Perot, however much he may try to fend off pertinacious inquiry. Take his plans for beating the drug problem in the inner cities.

In 1978, Texas Gov. Bill Clements asked Perot to help lead the state’s newly declared “war on drugs.” This became Perot’s crusade; he quickly mobilized a group of his corporate attorneys to rewrite portions of the state’s criminal code. According to Todd Mason, author of a biography of Perot: “He wanted pushers to serve mandatory jail sentences, stores to restrict sales of paint and glue and druggists to report every sale of restricted pills to the police. He wanted wire-tapping authority for the police and more.”

Resistance was swift, allying civil-rights advocates with pharmacists with state legislators who feared crowding prisons beyond an already intolerable degree. Perot’s plans were effectively thwarted, but his views grew increasingly militant. In early 1988, Dallas police invited Perot to help them respond to a City Council order establishing a review board to prosecute police misconduct.

It was then that Perot, who felt that the “real problems” facing the police were those of morale, first espoused his ideas for cordoning off black and Latino neighborhoods and subjecting the residents to mandatory searches for drugs and guns. “You can declare civil war,” he announced. “There ain’t no bail . . . (and) drug dealers go to POW camp. You start dealing with the problems in straight military terms.”

Perot’s invocation of such solutions is integral to his ideological outlook, which is militarist-corporativist, reminiscent of 1930s Italian fascism. Former employees have testified to the strong military flavor of his company, which was heavy with former military officers.

Perot’s folksy style belies the fact that he pays careful attention to his personal image, much like the actor-politician Ronald Reagan. In tune with this carefully fostered image as the daredevil, rules-be-damned, can-do CEO, Perot had built up numerous contacts with military and paramilitary soldiers of fortune, who were mustered for such escapades as the springing of some of his company’s employees from an Iranian prison (simultaneously releasing several hundred convicted rapists and robbers into the general population of Tehran, though this does not seem to have bothered Perot).

Perot’s ties to right-wing, militarist populism may be more complex and troubling than is now supposed. At least one former army intelligence officer who has worked directly with Perot on a number of projects also has connections with the right-wing political cult/movement of Lyndon LaRouche, now serving time in federal prison.

Those wondering about the genesis of Perot’s program to deal with the drug problem in the inner city might study the LaRouche program, as articulated by LaRouche himself in 1985: “We must declare war, a war which we must fight with the weapons of war. . . . Law-enforcement methods must support the military side of the war on drugs. . . . The primary objective of the War on Drugs is military in nature: to destroy the enemy quasi-state, the international drug-trafficking interest. . . . and by detaining, as ‘prisoners of war’ or as traitors or spies, all persons aiding the drug-trafficking interest.”

Nothing about Perot is accidental. His bid has been long meditated and carefully planned. There’s plenty to be dug up, if the press understands its responsibilities.