Parties’ Pols Doubt Potency of Perot Drive

While President Bush and Democratic nominee Bill Clinton worked Saturday to appeal to former Ross Perot supporters, political professionals in both parties voiced skepticism that the Perot movement could become a third force that determines who becomes President.

Perot’s plan would face several formidable obstacles, according to political strategists and outside analysts, including questions about his commitment, his ability to remain popular among one-time supporters, and the degree to which any political figure can “deliver” votes to a candidate.

“There are a lot of people who are so fed up this year that it may be possible,” said Walter Dean Burnham of the University of Texas, one of the country’s leading experts on presidential politics. “But without a real candidate, I don’t think its going to work.”

Perot “would like to have it both ways, have an impact on the race but not actually run,” Burnham said. “I don’t think electoral politics works that way.”

Publicly, the Bush and Clinton camps were striving Saturday to be gracious toward Perot and maintain open lines with him.

Bush campaign chairman Frederic V. Malek said the campaign “would welcome any serious proposals from Ross Perot” and expressed confidence that Bush already “stands behind the policies that Perot and his supporters are for.”

Clinton senior strategist James Carville said the “frustration and desire to change things” that Perot had tapped into was “a huge force in American politics. That sort of phenomenon is going to remain.”

Privately, however, both sides were highly skeptical that the Perot movement would continue to affect the race.

“It’s going nowhere,” a senior Clinton aide said. “The world is full of people who want to be President but darn few want to run for it. After Labor Day, Ross Perot isn’t going to exist” as a force. “The campaign gets on with the people who are there.”

Said a senior Bush aide: “People can cast a protest vote in the primaries, but they don’t waste a protest vote in the presidential election. We’re certainly going to be out there saying, ‘A vote for Perot is a vote for Clinton.’ ”

Skepticism about Perot’s commitment to the third-force idea arose even as he explained it. Perot unveiled the proposal Friday night on CNN’s Larry King Show, but had said nothing quite so ambitious in an interview taped earlier in the day with ABC’s Barbara Walters.

At times during King’s show he seemed to be developing his idea as he spoke. By referring often to his proposal as just “an idea” to present to his volunteers, he left plenty of room for backing away should he choose to.

“It looks like this guy got worried that everyone was mad at him, so he’s trying to find a way to make it up,” one senior Bush campaign official said. “I’m not sure he really means it.”

Even if Perot does seriously pursue a third-force plan, questions remain about how many state ballots will actually carry his name, a factor that could greatly reduce his leverage with the two major candidates.

If Perot is on all 50 ballots, even a small, residual vote for him could have great impact. “A few percentage points doesn’t sound like very much now,” a Bush strategist said, “but it could make all the difference in November.”

But so far, Perot’s ballot prospects are cloudy. He is on the ballot in 24 states and has yet to qualify in the largest two, California and New York.

Although Perot generated an enormous wave of enthusiasm when he was running, his withdrawal from the race has disillusioned many former supporters, raising questions about his remaining popularity.

A Los Angeles Times Poll taken Thursday and Friday showed that among Perot’s own backers, more than a quarter now view him unfavorably, almost a fifth feel he was never serious about running in the first place and more than a third believe his withdrawal indicates he lacked the proper temperament to be President.

Noting that no more half of the Texas billionaire’s backers had ever described themselves as strongly committed to Perot, one senior Bush adviser voiced doubts about whether he would now be able to influence any more than a small, hard core of followers.

“Now that he’s stiffed them once, he’s going to have trouble persuading them that he’s really something special,” the official said.

Outside analysts also noted that although third-party candidates for President in modern American history have never been particularly successful, third-force movements without a central charismatic candidate to provide a focus have produced even less. And very few, if any, prominent figures have ever demonstrated a real ability to transfer their own popularity to someone else.

A final difficulty involves Perot’s platform. As Perot described his idea, he and his movement would present a platform to the presidential hopefuls, as well as candidates for the House and Senate, and evaluate them on the basis of their responses.

But senior former Perot aides have said that one of the reasons their candidate backed out was his realization that many ideas his campaign had developed and was prepared to unveil--cuts in Social Security, increases in the gasoline tax, elimination of government programs--might be extremely unpopular.

In any case, noted the senior Clinton strategist, neither candidate is likely to change his party’s platform drastically to accommodate Perot. “What are we supposed to do?” he asked “Say, ‘We don’t believe what we used to believe in, now we believe in what Perot believes in because we want to be President?’ ”

“If there’s one thing we’ve learned it’s that people want you to stand up for what you think,” he said.

Political professionals had always been skeptical of Perot’s ability to hold together his coalition once he began to be specific about solutions to the country’s problems. Without his own presence as a unifying figure, the coalition might well fall apart, they believed.

One prominent supporter, singer and actress Cher, warned Perot of that possibility when she called him during King’s program. “Whether you like it or not, you are the focus,” she said. “It’s like you are the father of this patriot movement. Whether you like it or not, you have to be there.”