Perot Once Tried to Hire Bush, First Lady Says

First Lady Barbara Bush says undeclared presidential candidate Ross Perot once offered her husband “a big job” and his refusal may have triggered bad feeling between the two men.

Mrs. Bush, interviewed for ABC’s “20/20,” said her husband did not consider taking the job.

When pressed as to what it was, she said: “I think it was to head his (Perot’s) oil company or something (in the late 1970s). Maybe people don’t say no to Ross Perot and maybe that’s why he feels this way.”

Perot’s oil company, Petrus Oil, was founded in the late 1970s. He sold it to an Australian firm in 1988. His spokesman, James Squires, did not return calls seeking comment.

President Bush, interviewed on the same program, said that he would not bar homosexuals from his Cabinet but that he supports excluding gays from the military.