Why Stockdale? Perot’s Friend Says: ‘Why Not Me?’ : Running mate: Retired admiral and ex-POW is a stranger to political game but no stranger to challenge.

James Bond Stockdale is a most unusual candidate for vice president of the United States. Less than a month before the Nov. 3 election, he has no campaign schedule, no rallies to attend. There are no self-important aides rushing about, no entourage following him from place to place.

He is simply a loyal man doing a favor for a good friend--a friend who happens to be Ross Perot.

Stockdale, a retired vice admiral and heroic prisoner of war in Vietnam, was officially tabbed by Perot last week to serve as his running mate on the Texan’s independent presidential ticket.

“It started as an invitation from a friend, a man I admire, and one I want to help,” Stockdale said in an interview with The Times. “The more I get into it, the more I see I have skills that have been tested and tried. It has dawned on me, why not me?”

For the past 11 years, the soft-spoken recipient of the Medal of Honor has served as a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank on the campus of Stanford University. An academic at heart, the 68-year-old, silver-haired Stockdale is more comfortable discussing the writings of Greek philosophers than contemporary politics.

He was named in March as Perot’s interim vice presidential nominee; the expectation then, stated by Perot himself, was that he ultimately would be replaced by a more conventional candidate. But that changed with Perot’s departure from the presidential arena in July and his reversal of that decision last week. As a result, Stockdale is just now formulating the views he will offer the voters.

A lifelong Republican and conservative, he wrestles out loud with the question of how to define himself politically, settling finally on the term “pragmatist.”

“I would not want any kind of philosophical framework to interfere with my making a good decision,” he concluded over lunch at the Stanford Faculty Club. “I just play it as it goes.”

An affable and unpretentious man, Stockdale is renowned for his strength in withstanding torture and leading a spirited resistance among his fellow prisoners during 7 1/2 years of captivity in North Vietnam.

He walks with a pronounced limp because of a knee broken twice by his captors. As the highest-ranking naval POW, he was subjected to torture 15 times and spent four years in solitary confinement, much of it in leg irons.

His wife, Sybil, gained prominence in the United States for her efforts to publicize the plight of the POWs, even when her own government sought to keep the matter quiet. After his release in 1973, the couple chronicled their experiences in a book called “In Love and War,” which was the basis for a television movie in 1987.

“This is a man of integrity. He is a man of courage. He is not a politician,” said Martin Anderson, a former aide to Presidents Richard M. Nixon and Ronald Reagan who is now a Hoover Institution fellow. “It’s possible after a few weeks go by we’re going to think he’s the stronger part of the ticket. I think he adds a certain degree of credibility to Perot.”

Stockdale’s wartime hardship also will give him a platform on which to discuss the program of national austerity that is at the heart of Perot’s economic agenda. Like Perot, Stockdale argues that the nation’s huge debt makes the country vulnerable to control by overseas banks and foreign governments.

If any candidate has the personal credentials to preach self-sacrifice to protect the national interest, it would be Stockdale.

“There’s no question of my experience with adversity,” he said. “That would be a kickoff point to (tell the public): ‘You’ve got to be as harsh on yourself as you can afford to be.’ ”

At the same time, Stockdale has no intention of becoming a symbol of national division. Despite his belief that anti-war protests prolonged his captivity, he says he bears no grudge against those, such as Democratic presidential nominee Bill Clinton, who opposed the U.S. policy in Vietnam.

More than any other single experience, Stockdale was shaped by the Vietnam War. Perot has called him “a man of steel” who “has been hammered on the forge of brutality.” Much of Stockdale’s work since his release has been research, writing and teaching that uses the experiences of the Vietnam era to explore larger questions of morality and leadership.

Stockdale has a square jaw, intense blue eyes and a quick sense of humor. He said he survived his war imprisonment through the inspiration of the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, a one-time Greek slave crippled by a cruel master. The retired admiral, whose idea of relaxation is to read works on philosophy, is in the process of writing a book about the ancient thinker.

In a 1989 magazine article, Stockdale described President Bush as a “good friend.” But he is truly devoted to Perot, who first came to his attention when the wealthy businessman attempted to deliver medicine and food to prisoners of war in 1969. Perot aided Sybil Stockdale in her quest to improve the treatment of POWs, and the two men met after Stockdale’s release in 1973.

“For Ross Perot, Jim Stockdale would do just about anything, and actually, that’s exactly what he’s doing,” said John Bunzel, a Hoover Institution fellow and a friend of Stockdale’s. “They both have this very special feeling for each other, and you don’t normally get a presidential candidate and a vice presidential candidate who have this close, personal relationship.”

Stockdale said he sees Perot as a man with “messianic attributes” and “a very soft heart” who will make a formidable candidate in the final stretch. “I really believe Ross Perot is a much-maligned and underestimated person.”

For his part, Stockdale said he is prepared to perform whatever political tasks Perot requests and is ready to go head-to-head with his two foes for the vice presidency, incumbent Dan Quayle and Sen. Al Gore of Tennessee, in a nationally televised debate scheduled for Oct. 13 in Atlanta.

“It doesn’t frighten me,” he said. “I look at the field and I find I am not in the company of men who have faced the tests I have. Let them take me on.”

Stockdale has maintained a skepticism toward government and a contempt for Congress since his days as a Navy fighter pilot serving off the coast of Vietnam.

Assigned to an aircraft carrier in the Gulf of Tonkin, Stockdale was a witness to the Aug. 4, 1964, episode that brought the United States into the war against North Vietnam: the bogus report of an attack on American warships by Vietnamese patrol boats.

Flying over the scene, the Annapolis graduate could find no sign of enemy boats in the vicinity and reported that there was no assault. “I had the best seat in the house from which to detect boats--if there were any,” he later wrote in “In Love and War.”

Nevertheless, President Lyndon B. Johnson used a trumped-up account of the incident to win congressional approval of the Tonkin Gulf resolution authorizing an attack on North Vietnam--a document used to justify the war for years to come. Stockdale believes to this day that the war was initiated under “false pretenses.”

The day after the supposed attack, he was ordered to blow up an oil storage complex near the city of Vinh. Stockdale dropped the first American bombs on North Vietnam.

The following year, his plane was shot down during another bombing raid. Flying 600 m.p.h. just above the treetops, Stockdale ejected from his aircraft and landed on the main street of a small town. The townspeople immediately set upon him, beating him and breaking his left knee so severely that his lower leg jutted out at a 90-degree angle.

He did not receive medical care for a month, and so has never been able to bend his knee again. After his capture, he realized he also broke a bone in his back when he ejected from his plane. As a result of that injury, he cannot lift his left arm higher than his shoulder.

During his first weeks of captivity, a civilian rushed into his cell and shot at him, grazing his leg. His guards wrestled the would-be assassin away and later told Stockdale the man had lost a child to American bombs.

Stockdale was beaten and tortured repeatedly as his captors forced him to sign propaganda statements. His arms were tied behind his back and jerked up while his head was forced to the ground between his calves. During one episode, Stockdale’s leg was broken in the same place as before.

But he continued to resist as best he could. When his captors planned to film a public confession, he beat his face to a pulp on a stool, chopped off his hair in an erratic fashion and slashed his scalp. He was not used in the film.

Although the prisoners were held in solitary confinement for long periods of time, they developed a method of communicating by tapping in code on the walls. As the senior officer at the “Hanoi Hilton,” as the POW camp was called, Stockdale helped organize the resistance movement that forged a strong bond among the prisoners.

“They had such a tremendous relationship over there,” said his wife. “He values that more than anything else.”

Stockdale was plagued by the fear that under torture he would reveal that he knew the Gulf of Tonkin attack was a fraud--an admission that would have been a powerful propaganda coup for North Vietnam.

Finally, after one torture session, he slashed his wrists with broken glass and blood gushed from an artery. His willingness to die shocked his tormentors and ended his interrogations.

In addition to the Medal of Honor, Stockdale received 26 other medals, including four Silver Stars and three Distinguished Service Medals. After his return home, he was promoted to admiral and eventually named to head the Naval War College until his retirement in 1979.

He remains critical of the U.S. government for attempting to wage a limited war in Vietnam without obtaining the commitment of the American public. He contends that the nation should have fought the war to win it, or never fought at all.

After leaving the Navy, he served as president of The Citadel, a military college in Charleston, S.C. But he left that post after less than a year, in part because of his unsuccessful battle with the college’s governing board to ban the hazing of freshmen.

At Stanford, he is well-regarded personally by liberals and conservatives alike, but his work at the Hoover Institution has provided few clues to any political agenda he might pursue as vice president.

“Stockdale’s contributions on campus, which have been significant, have been much more in the line of talking about personal experiences,” said Donald Kennedy, former president of the university and now a biology professor. “Little of what he has said in public or participated in has given me a chance to probe his philosophical ideas of government.”

Stockdale said he has long adhered to a Republican ideology and has never voted for a Democrat. He changed his registration to nonpartisan in May. And now that he is on the Perot ticket, he said he finds it “liberating” to depart from some of the views of his conservative friends.

He supports a woman’s right to choose abortion, for example, and is not opposed to some forms of gun control. He also favors a Perot proposal for government monitoring of strategic industries.

“I have no trouble with any of Ross’s ideas,” he said. “In fact, I’m damned glad to have my mind opened to the fact that I can make decisions like that and don’t have to please my Republican friends.”

Stockdale and his wife lead a private life, dividing their time between their home in Coronado, near San Diego, and a condo at Stanford. Stockdale swims a half a mile every day and says he suffers little pain from his wartime injuries.

The retired admiral is happy to begin campaigning but said he has received no personal direction from Perot and that the campaign has scheduled no appearances for him. Stockdale said, however, that he thought he would get a copy of Gore’s book on environmental issues, “Earth in the Balance,” and read it in preparation for the debate.

“I’m being questioned because I’m not aggressive enough in pursuit of the job, but you’ve got to do what’s natural,” he said. “You can’t start acting like somebody else. It just seems to me I’d look foolish if I was out there with a sign at a shopping mall.”