Perot Hints Bush Is Losing Touch With Reality

WASHINGTON — Independent candidate Ross Perot responded to criticism from President Bush on Thursday by suggesting Bush has lost touch with reality and accusing him of having “an army of people going around trying to destroy his opponents.”

In a CBS television interview Thursday, Bush said Perot was “kind of coming in from the fringe” with some “nutty ideas” during Monday’s third and final presidential debate. In another interview with the Fox network, Bush said 1992 “is the ugliest political year I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been in politics half my life.”

Perot, firing back in an interview with The Times, said people who stay in Washington too long “lose touch with reality, and reality looks like the fringe to them.”

He also said most of the campaign’s “ugliness comes straight from the Republican Party; they are creating ugly. If Bill Clinton and the Democrats are doing it, I haven’t seen it.”

Echoing an assertion he made earlier this year, and which the President has denied, Perot added: “Bush has got an army of people going around trying to destroy his opponents.”

Bolstered by his debate performance and a series of lengthy commercials, Perot has surged several percentage points in public opinion polls. He remains in third place, but his support could keep growing as he continues to air commercials on national television networks through Election Day.

Perot told The Times his media campaign will include 30-minute ads broadcast on ABC, CBS and NBC on Election Eve.

He declined to confirm or deny suggestions by some supporters that he take to the campaign trail during the campaign’s final week. “I haven’t said what I’ll be doing next, but I’ve decided. We’ll try to do what we need to do.”

Perot also said he has accepted no help in writing scripts for his commercials and has “been buried getting all this TV stuff out.”

He dismissed suggestions by some of his former supporters--including Eastman Kodak executive John P. White, who initially advised Perot on the economy but now supports Clinton--that he is not seriously pursuing the White House but instead is using his campaign to spread his warnings about the danger of the nation’s runaway budget deficits and mushrooming national debt.

If he were not serious about winning, Perot said, “I wouldn’t be spending $60 million (on the campaign) and putting my family--the people I love the most--through eight months of hell. The point is it’s up to the people. My life will go on. That really puts me on the fringe: I will not do anything to win; it’s not my life’s mission.”

The most recent polls show Perot with the support of about 17% to 19% of the electorate, about 9 to 15 percentage points behind Bush. Clinton continues to lead Bush by up to 19 points, but his increasingly nervous campaign aides have expressed concern that if Perot keeps gaining, he will drain more support from the Arkansas governor than from the President.

The back-and-forth between Bush and Perot on Thursday had its roots in Monday’s concluding debate, when the Texas businessman leveled several criticisms at the President, including accusations that he built up the regimes of dictators Saddam Hussein of Iraq and Manuel A. Noriega of Panama before the U.S. took military action against their countries.

Bush said in a CBS-TV interview that Perot has “some good ideas and he’s got some nutty ideas, and he makes some crazy statements.” As an example, the President cited Perot’s charge that the Administration had given Iraq a green light to invade Kuwait. Administration officials released documentation Tuesday aimed at refuting that charge, and Bush disputed it again on Thursday.

Perot, in his interview with The Times, responded by saying: “He should have brought it up when we debated. One of my nutty ideas is everybody needs to have a job to make a living. If that’s a nutty idea, put me away.

“Having people go to do public service in Washington and not serve themselves, if that’s a nutty idea, put me away.

“Serving the people instead of being an imperial President. All that probably sounds nutty to anybody who’s been in Washington awhile.”

Bush, who had favored including Perot in the debates in hopes that it might help dislodge Clinton as the race’s front-runner, was asked in the CBS interview if he had any regrets that the forums included all three candidates

“A little bit,” the President said. Referring to Perot, he went on, “. . . you know, kind of coming in from the fringe making these statements. And then I think it kind of clouded things . . . . When he said that we gave permission to take the northern part of Kuwait, I mean, that is absolutely absurd.”

Perot, in The Times interview, said: “Creating Manuel Noriega, creating Saddam Hussein, that’s the fringe?”

In the President’s view, Perot said, “anybody who tries to stay on the issues looks like they are on the fringe.”

Perot also called his running mate, retired Vice Adm. James B. Stockdale, “a wonderful, wise patriot.” And he dismissed suggestions by some analysts that Stockdale’s inclusion on the independent ticket shows Perot is not serious about being elected.

Stockdale appeared uncomfortable and out of his element during the Oct. 13 vice presidential debate, often standing aside as Vice President Dan Quayle and Sen. Al Gore of Tennessee--Clinton’s running mate--traded charges. Perot said that while Stockdale is “not a handler-programmed speaker . . . some of my best people in the computer field are not good speakers but can get the job done when smooth talkers can’t get it done.”

Perot also said: “Would you rather have a man with his wisdom and experience or two young guys who would have trouble getting a job in middle management in corporate America?”

Perot said Stockdale, who has kept a low public profile since the vice presidential debate, “will always do what’s good for the country and won’t have to take a poll to figure out what that is.”

In other developments Thursday, a poll conducted by the Times Mirror Center for the People and the Press found that when respondents were asked which candidate they had heard the most about in the media during the last week, 39% said Clinton, 28% said Perot and 14% named Bush. The pattern of response to that question has been the same since the first presidential debate on Oct. 11.

Of voters who have seen the candidates’ respective commercials, 52% rate Clinton’s positively, 47% rate Perot’s as positive and 26% view Bush’s positively.