Does This Race Need a Spoiler? : Volatile ’92 campaign takes a turn for the Perot

Responding, so he says, to the pleas of his loyal supporters, Ross Perot has reactivated the run for the presidency that he so abruptly abandoned last July 16. Well, kind of abandoned. As campaign filings show, Perot never really quit the race that he had never formally got around to announcing he was in. Through August, the Perot campaign had spent $18 million--$16 million of it from the Texas billionaire’s own deep pockets--to fund the 50-state organization that has worked to keep his candidacy alive. How much more he might have shelled out had he not temporarily slipped back into the political shadows is staggering to contemplate.

BELOW HIS RIVALS: The Perot candidacy now becomes the wild card in the 1992 campaign. When Perot suspended his campaign in July his standing in the preference polls had slid to below 10%. That rating should climb on his re-entry, if only briefly, though it seems unlikely that come Nov. 3 he will do much better than third-party candidates have usually done. But in some key states--Texas and Ohio are most often mentioned--Perot could poll enough to tip the balance away from either President Bush or his Democratic challenger, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton. That would affect the electoral vote; conceivably, it could even affect the election. In the end, Perot’s chief political significance may prove to be not as a doer or an inspirer, but simply as a spoiler.

In his earlier self-selected role as populist tribune, Perot evidenced an unmistakable testiness whenever hard questions were raised about certain of his business activities or about his temperament and character. There have been other revelations since that ought to disturb thoughtful voters, including stories this week that Perot hired private detectives to pry into the lives not of his political enemies but of his faithful supporters. Perot in fact seems to have a chilling zeal for covert investigation.

ABOVE THE FRAY: Because of the hard--and proper--questions raised about Perot’s methods, he will probably continue to hold himself aloof from the usual and sometimes prickly give and take of political campaigning. Look for him instead to rely on expensive TV ads and friendly interviewers to try to put himself and his message across. That’s too bad, not least because Perot does have some interesting and respectable ideas--most prominently his tough if untimely plan to reduce the budget deficit. The electorate would be best served if he would not just recite his proposals for dealing with the nation’s problem but go into critical forums to defend and elaborate on them.

The office that he seeks, after all, is not simply a platform from which to deliver orders, or a vehicle for compelling obedience or digging up dirt on one’s real or suspected enemies. As with all politics, the presidency requires an ability to recognize possible merit in competing interests and with it a readiness to compromise. Perot’s self-confidence and assertiveness are in many ways admirable. It is the rigidity underlying them that many, including this newspaper, find so troubling.