COLUMN RIGHT / JOHN SUNUNU : We Need a President in the White House, Not a Pollster : Ross Perot offers only one-liners and fuzzy solutions, when principles and judgment are called for.

As Ross Perot prepares to announce his candidacy for the presidency, it’s worth asking who this man is, what makes him tick and how he leveraged himself into the national spotlight.

The transformation of Ross Perot, tycoon, into Boss Perot, would-be President and trouble-shooter, seems as improbable as the transformation in Jerzy Kozinski’s “Being There” of Chance the Gardener into Chauncey Gardener. The billionaire who would be President has feted the American people with one-liners and fuzzy “solutions” to our most profound problems. But what does it all mean?

The Perot approach to governance may best be summarized in something he wrote for U.S. News & World Report. “Leadership,” he pronounced, “is this: Have a goal; have a vision; assemble a talented team; get it done, go on to the next one.” If the Perot philosophy to government can be summarized in one phrase it is his famous refrain: “It’s simple.”

Consider the Perot “solution” to the federal budget deficit. He says that he would assemble the best minds and most important players in Washington around a table, hand out blank sheets of paper and keep the doors locked until they solved the problem. He’s right: That approach is simple. As someone who has been involved in the months of negotiations for budgets, I can tell you that is also just sheer fantasy.

Television candidate Perot says that he would consult the American people--all of the American people--on the issues of the day, by means of an “electronic town meeting.” Set aside the insuperable technical difficulties of doing this, and you still face a fundamental problem of government by audience share. Perot is pandering.

We don’t need presidents armed with blank sheets. We need presidents with ideas. Ross Perot wants to make a virtue of a plan that turns the President of the United States into a pollster. That is not simple: It is simple-minded.

To paraphrase Edmund Burke: A President owes you his judgment, and he betrays you if he sacrifices his judgment to your opinion. Leadership consists in standing firm on principle, and leading a nation forward through commitment and example--and not in saying: Are you sure you want me to do this?

Perot has run into a press buzz saw for a simple reason. He has come to the race with lots of swagger but with empty saddlebags on the issues. In some ways, his candidacy demonstrates America’s breathtaking greatness and tolerance, for only in America could a man so naive and so shallow become so rich.

Perot revels in distortions, fantasies, contradictions and excuses. One of my favorite quotes from Chairman Perot begins with this perennial: “Let’s assume every city looked like Singapore.” That device lets him shield his eyes from our vexing problems and responsibilities, to treat the United States as something unstructured and manipulable, a sort of industrialized Club Med.

Indeed, when Perot shoots from the hip, he often forgets to unholster his six-shooter. He doesn’t do his homework. He has argued, for instance, that if he had been President, he would have insisted that Soviets use U.S. aid to purchase American goods. Well, in the grain credits we have provided, we have already done that.

He promotes gun control but supports the National Rifle Assn.

He says that he believes in the glories of the free market but then proposes to create something akin to Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry, which would pick potential winners business-by-business and industry-by-industry. He sounds, in other words, like an oil-patch Michael Dukakis.

He says he believes in free trade, but he opposes the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Some argue that we should dismiss such inconsistencies and missteps because the fellow has just begun to campaign. But there is no spring training for the presidency. If you don’t have the issues and the background, you shouldn’t suit up for the game.

Perot’s weakness on issues leads us to the issue of character. If you examine his record, several things jump out at you. First, he has a tendency to rewrite his personal history.

It seems impossible to get straight answers about things, small and large: Did he deliver newspapers by horseback or on his bicycle? Why did he seek an early release from naval duty? Under what conditions did he attempt to save the Wall Street brokerage house of du Pont Glore Forgan? Did he try to intimidate journalists at the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram?

It’s difficult to separate fact from fiction in the life of Ross Perot--for the people, for journalists and, evidently, for Ross Perot himself.

This leads to a second personal quirk: Perot is a quitter. He tried to shorten his naval service because he considered his colleagues insufficiently righteous. And while his Annapolis classmates sweated off their commitments to the U.S. taxpayers, Perot spent his final two years of duty at a desk.

When Wall Street called in the early 1970s, the story repeated itself. Perot found himself unable to resuscitate the firm of du Pont Glore Forgan. So he quit.

He has walked away from IBM and General Motors. He quit the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. He has quit on his support and taken back “charity” donations of millions of dollars to the Dallas Arboretum and other worthwhile causes that didn’t bend to his whim.

So far, Ross Perot treats his life as a series of personal triumphs, marred only by what he considers the missteps and venality of others. His reply to media scrutiny sounds exactly like his earlier whining--that it always is someone else’s fault. This time, he blames Republicans.

There is no Republican conspiracy. Bob Woodward and the Washington Post certainly are not Republican agents. And common sense tells you that Perot has spun out of control when he hints that Bryant Gumbel and others in the news media have become Republican shills.

When you get down to it, Ross Perot is an angry rich man who can dish out heat but can’t take it. His inexperience, testiness, shallowness and quirks will become legitimate topics of exploration.

Presidents must prove themselves worthy of the presidency. They must demonstrate the experience, integrity, selflessness and character to serve. They must have what it takes to lead the nation through times of crisis.

If the Cold War taught us anything, it is that powerful centralized bureaucracies don’t work. Command structures work wonderfully at a business like Perot Systems, but they don’t work when you want to lead a country. Freedom works. Freedom from excessive government works. The market works. Federalism works.

Let the campaign begin, and let all sides debate key issues fully and vigorously. But make no mistake: Character and experience will count in this campaign.

I sincerely believe in the common sense and wisdom of the American voter. And when the American people get a good look at Ross Perot, they will say: The “uncandidate” has no clothes.