Ross Perot Was No Jimmy Stewart : Politics: His heroics were limited to encouraging the middle class to defend its turf.

The Ross Perot campaign is over, and politics’ Lone Ranger rides off into the sunset, leaving us to grapple with the question: “Who was that masked man?”

Of course, since Perot’s main appeal was not substantive but symbolic, the more relevant question may be, “What was the mask?” What was the configuration of symbols that signaled to his supporters that he was their man; why was his the kiss that awakened the middle class from their slumber?

First of all, I think, the middle class is more than an economic stratum; it represents an ethos. As it stands economically between rich and poor, so does it ethically stake out a middle ground between the ideology of the haves-and-want-mores and the ideology of the dispossessed; between self-interest and the needs of a community. Granted, it was the middle class that supported Proposition 13, the opening salvo of the Reagan Revolution, which proclaimed the interests of the homeowner to be above his or her responsibility to the community.

But supporters of countless revolutions are later betrayed by the very principles that spawned them. And as the polarization of the Reagan and Bush administrations collapsed the middle ground between self-interest and community--what was Reaganomics but the declaration that self-interest was the national interest?--so too was the middle squeezed out everywhere: Now you were either rich or poor, Republican or Democrat, right or wrong. In short, the middle class found itself without any ground to stand on.

Then along came Ross Perot, everything about him effectively repudiating either/or orthodoxy. He was independent of a polarized identity. He was neither left nor right, Republican nor Democrat, conservative nor liberal. To the contrary, he was and/and: a billionaire and a populist, pro-choice and puritan, a straight-shooting, plain-speaking bankroller of covert paramilitary actions. He came from Texarkana, for Pete’s sakes--a city that’s in Texas and Arkansas. As a symbol, this was more potent than mere Hope. Clearly, here was a man who was familiar with the middle ground. Here was a man who could not only awaken the middle class but remind it of its ethos.

While the press often compared Perot’s candidacy to the Frank Capra movie, “Meet John Doe,” I was reminded of another Capra film, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” In this movie, Jimmy Stewart, whose heart’s desire is to travel far from Bedford Falls, is deterred, time and time again, by his sense of obligation to the town, just as Ross Perot, who didn’t want to be President--a “dirty job,” he called it--agreed reluctantly to serve if drafted by the people. Jimmy Stewart must protect the savings and loan, the peoples’ bank that will make possible their dreams--to own their homes--against the designs of the evil Mr. Potter. Perot was seen as the potential savior of a country whose S&Ls; were already in the hands of Mr. Potter.

But there is something fundamentally dishonest about the movie that should give us pause. It is the sequence in which Jimmy Stewart is shown the town as it would have looked if he had never lived, if the evil Mr. Potter had held sway unchecked. It is a tawdry landscape of bars and shoddy housing; one can imagine adult bookstores taking root just off the town square. This vision is what keeps the movie from being art, which demands truthfulness, and relegates it to the sentimental--wishful thinking.

The fact is, tyrants don’t usually abide sleaze. The trains run on time. Order is imposed on disorder. The head rules the body. The man posing in the mask stands for democracy and freedom of choice; the man behind the mask is Mr. Potter.

No leader can be Jimmy Stewart. We are Jimmy Stewart; it is our ethos, the middle ground between the powerful and the disempowered, that makes this so. And as such, I can only hope that the American middle follows the advice given me by a ballroom dancing teacher as we waltzed around the room: “Resist,” he said to me. “I can’t lead unless you resist.”