THE SLINGS AND ARROWS OF OUTRAGEOUS CHARGES - Perot Muddies the Debate Mix

Tonight, as Americans tune in the first 1992 presidential debate, all eyes will be on the unpredictable billionaire, Ross Perot, who has yet to really explain why he got back into the race he once led and now trails hopelessly. Maybe he’s about to tell us--he could still have a powerful voice.

No third-party presidential candidate in U.S. history has ever collapsed from 35%-40% support in June to 7%-10% in October as Perot has. Part of his entry involves justifying himself to a disillusioned public that now ranks him barely above a used-car salesman. There’s no doubt, as well, that he’s genuinely concerned about the economy. Yet there’s also the great mutual dislike of the two Texans, George Bush and Perot, and the possibility that the entrepreneur joined the race to deliver a last blow against a despised foe. Many will tune in just to see.

Earlier this year, Perot swung a sharp machete. His March-June attacks helped transform Bush from a heavy favorite into a stunned President who ran third in some polls. Perot may think he can score again in October, and it is possible. Most polls show Bush currently drawing only 32%-38% in a three-way race. If Perot uses the three debates to keep indicting Bush’s economic policy and even “economic treason” as he did in his television speech, he could embarrass the President--and possibly draw enough Republican protest votes to turn a Bush defeat into a rout.

There’s also another factor. Perot’s historical reputation depends on Bush being defeated. If he helps reelect the man he’s criticized so much, he’d be a laughingstock from Silicon Valley to the Alamo. In a similar vein, since July, Perot’s image has gone from a national folk hero to an ego-driven rich crank. He will have to have a wily October blueprint to make up for his seeming dumbness of getting back in. Polls show him with only one-quarter of the support he had four months ago--and his entry hasn’t made much difference in the “who’s ahead” department. Bill Clinton still leads Bush by 8 to 15 points in most polls.

Perhaps revealingly, Perot seems to be downplaying his earlier concerns about abortion rights, civil rights and such. Instead, he is emerging as a Sun Belt fiscal conservative, concerned economic patriot and proud military veteran, with a former Vietnam Medal of Honor winner, retired Vice Adm. James Stockdale, as his running mate, and a retired Reagan sub-Cabinet official, the intriguingly named Orson Swindle, as his spokesman. The upper ranks of Bushdom, by comparison, look like a bunch of softies, economic naifs and crazed spendthrifts.

This suggests that if Perot campaigns beyond the debates and his TV economic lectures about rescuing the country for our grandchildren, he’d be likely to concentrate on the Sun Belt retirement, high-tech and military areas--from Orange County to Phoenix, Dallas-Fort Worth to Oklahoma and central Florida to North Carolina and Virginia--where his core support is greatest. If he does, and he winds up with 4%-6% of the total national vote, the majority of his supporters would almost certainly have been 1988 Bush backers.

What Bush advisers pray for, of course, is that Perot’s ego, in cahoots with his wallet, overpowers his brain, so that he pours money into national television; attacks both Clinton and Bush in the debates, and starts expanding his support to the 15%-20% level, at which point he’d start making serious inroads into Clinton’s lead and regaining widespread support from former Perot supporters. That could push Clinton’s margin down to 4-6 points and get Bush back into the ballgame as the debates conclude. GOPers privately say one reason for Bush’s fierce personal attacks on Clinton has been to drive some of his supporters who were ex-Perot voters back to their former favorite.

If this is a danger to Clinton, the danger to Bush is that he and Perot have a relationship verging on a blood feud, and Perot would enjoy damaging Bush. One approach could be attacking Bush’s integrity, citing his Iran-Contra or Iraqgate involvement, and emphasizing his economic mismanagement in blunt Texas businessman’s language that would most hurt Bush with right-of-center moderates and conservatives. The more Perot gives up any pursuit of moderates who now favor Clinton in order to play the role of two-fisted Sun Belt economic patriot and concerned grandfather who’s going to tell the unvarnished truth right in Bush’s back yard, the more he plays into a plausible third-party tradition.

In the two previous periods when the Republican Party moved away from Main Street and Middle America toward Wall Street, speculation and favoritism to the rich--as Perot himself says it has under Ronald Reagan and Bush--a significant minority of GOP voters registered angry dissent through such third-party movements as the Populists in the 1890s and the La Follette Progressives in the 1920s. Even former President Richard M. Nixon has admitted that his own father shifted to Robert La Follette in 1924.

In many ways, Perot, who was an active Nixon- and Reagan-era Republican, represents a latter-day populist and anti-GOP Establishment dissent in the 1990s. Like the Populists and Progressives of yore, the ultimate justification of Perot’s insurgency is likely to come from a return to power of the Democrats and their historically greater commitment to economic activism and to the common man.

Before his entry, Perot had already achieved this kind of realigning effect by choosing not to enter the presidential race in July at precisely the right time to let Clinton sweep a solid majority of the Perot voters into his coalition and pull ahead. This effect could now be at risk. The billionaire had achieved something unprecedented by pulling ahead of Bush and Clinton, and then essentially transferring his opportunity to the Arkansas governor. The latter’s victory against Bush would ratify the Perot movement’s own importance as a way station. Even reluctant historians would have to be impressed.

Things could still turn out that way if Perot uses October to weaken Bush by his presence and criticisms. But the odds on a self-made electronics billionaire with a wallet-sized ego managing this transformation with agility are uncertain. After you’ve been close to 40% in the Gallup Poll, accepting 7% isn’t an easy swallow.

One solution would be for Perot to turn his candidacy inactive in late October in order to avoid an embarrassment on Election Day. Some Bush strategists live in fear that Perot might decide to endorse Clinton after the Democrat partially accepts some of Perot’s deficit priorities for two years hence, when the economy is moving again. Perot’s television speeches attacking Reagan-Bush economics already seem to be helping Clinton. It isn’t likely that Perot will start blasting both his major-party rivals and spending a lot of money to become a serious contender again.

Such a gambit would open Perot to attack as a spoiler--and this time, even many who favored him in May and June, before the baton of political change passed to Clinton, would be critics. By contrast, a Perot indicting Washington’s economic mismanagement, concentrating on the Sun Belt and polling in the 5% to 7% range, would be no institutional threat. He would be praised as an economic statesman, not decried as a spoiler who could throw the election into the House of Representatives.

We may not know for a few weeks whether Perot understands his limited role or is merely on an unplanned ego trip. But he should understand the stakes: Misjudgment could make him a joke in the history books.