Nixon Predicts a ‘Very Close’ Race Between Bush and Perot

WASHINGTON — Former President Richard M. Nixon predicted Friday that this year’s race for the White House will evolve into a two-man contest between Dallas billionaire Ross Perot and President Bush that will be “very close.”

Nixon added that he expects the President to prevail in the contest.

While saying he remains committed to Bush because of his foreign policy achievements, Nixon praised Perot as a formidable candidate.

“This isn’t simply because he has a lot of money to spend,” Nixon said during an appearance on NBC-TV’s “Today” show. “It’s because he is a non-politician. He is for change. And the American people want change.”

Perot “has a chance to win, which I would not have said even two weeks ago,” Nixon said.

In Nixon’s analysis, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, would finish third.

Nixon is the second former Republican President to predict this week that Perot would not follow the pattern of past independent candidates and fade in the fall. In a speech Monday at the National Press Club, former President Gerald R. Ford predicted that Perot’s appeal would last until the November election and that his showing could throw the election into the House of Representatives.

Although many Perot admirers favor him because he is not an elected official, Nixon said the Texan would benefit from his firsthand knowledge of the political system.

“Ross Perot is one who knows how to operate within the Establishment,” Nixon said. “He has had government cooperation with many of his ventures. He knows how the system works.”

Nixon said it is “too early to tell” what kind of chief executive Perot would make. But he said a President’s choice of aides is key and “when you look at his staff, it is very good. He treats them very well.”

Nixon also said it is possible that Perot was trying to win favors from the Nixon Administration between 1969 and 1973, when he had regular contacts with White House aides. Perot was trying to work through the Administration to improve treatment of U.S. prisoners in Vietnam. Notes taken by Nixon aides indicate that Perot also sought White House intervention on a federal contract problem and on a tax matter.

But Nixon said he had “yet to see a businessman who didn’t try to obtain favors from the Administration. So he was doing exactly what his other colleagues were doing in the business community. But I never saw him do anything that I thought was improper.”

The aides’ papers also suggest that Perot once proposed spending $50 million on a public relations campaign to help improve Nixon’s image. Nixon said Perot discussed the idea with aides, but “never talked to me about that.”