PERSPECTIVES ON ROSS PEROT : He Gave the System a Good Shaking : How has the would-be third candidate’s presence in--and now absence from--the race affected our political life? : Back to Real Business

Here we have a little man with an oversized savior complex who spent, at most, $10 million of his billions for a joy-ride at the expense of the American electorate. He was happy so long as all those small-town teachers and farmers and filling station owners operators were doing his bidding absolutely free. But as soon as he had to spend some real money, he balked.

Talk about “moral emptiness”--as the priggish Ross Perot did in trying to wheedle out of his commitment to the Navy. The vanity novel he paid Ken Follett to write about him should have warned us of his extraordinary narcissism. And the waiting-for-Godot-ness of his nonexistent political program should have told us that he doesn’t wake up in the morning and wonder how to get the country on track. He wakes up and thinks about what he has always thought about--how to make more money.

His announcement Thursday took me back to April 9, a month after Perot dropped his first political bombshell. The story I heard then makes me wonder now if Perot ever intended to stay in the race all the way.

The impetuous tycoon had slipped into London the week before to do megadeals to sell his data processing program to, I heard, Volkswagen and Eurocar. His lieutenants reminded him of his first priority: to make his company as successful as possible, since his goal is to take it public in two years. The deals might go cold if he took the rash chance of becoming President, and a sale to a foreign auto competitor could be politically embarrassing.

Perot, according to my source, reassured his associates that his real intention was to fatten the company and cash in, and that he’d lean back, buoyed by free volunteers, and enjoy the ride, but pull out sometime in the summer.

Whether or not the story is true in every detail, for my money Perot is a cheap fraud and never intended to be anyone’s “servant.”