Perot Calls Vote for Bush the Wasted One

Taking his long-shot campaign to two must-win states for President Bush--Florida and Missouri--independent candidate Ross Perot said Saturday that Bush is destined to lose and the American people should not waste their votes on him.

As part of what he calls his “two-minute drill” of election-eve campaigning, Perot will be in California today, speaking at a 2 p.m. rally at the Long Beach Convention Center and later in Santa Clara. He then returns to Dallas for his last pre-election public appearance.

At large and fervid rallies in Tampa and Kansas City, the Texas billionaire had words of ridicule for Democratic nominee Bill Clinton, whom he referred to as a “blow-dried” show dog who equates economic growth with chicken production. But he saved special and personal contempt for the President.

He repeated his charge that Bush had spent billions of dollars to create Saddam Hussein and then wasted American lives trying to overthrow the Iraqi dictator. He said that under Bush, the country has drifted and declined.

And he sneered at Bush’s warning last week that a vote for Perot would be wasted because the irascible independent cannot win.

“All those wonderful people that are lifelong Republicans, make sure they don’t waste their vote between now and Tuesday,” Perot told a throbbing, cheering crowd of about 7,000 at the University of South Florida’s Sun Dome in Tampa.

“You talk about throwing away a vote,” he added. “Number one, he (Bush) can’t win. Number two, with his record, he shouldn’t win.”

He continued to hammer at Bush in Kansas City, saying that as vice president and President, he had had 12 years in national office. “We can’t take four more years. Give him four more years and we’ll be a Third World country. This guy is shipping whole industries overseas.”

Perot’s hourlong speech in Tampa was the usual mix of folksy humor, platitudes and exhortations to “just do it.” He joked that he does not need Secret Service protection as Bush and Clinton do because they are controversial, “but everybody loves me.”

While he called for “fair, shared sacrifice,” he offered no specifics from his harsh plan to reduce the national deficit through tax increases and program spending cuts.

In a more rambling, late-afternoon speech before 10,000 people at a downtown Kansas City convention center, Perot assailed the nation’s high rate of violent crime and proposed that anyone convicted of using a gun while committing a crime should spend the rest of his life behind bars.

“Far as I’m concerned, if any human being in this country ever uses a gun to intimidate others--like in a holdup--or ever uses a gun to inflict violence on another person, we ain’t gonna see him on the street any more, ever,” he told the roaring Kansas City crowd.

Noticeably absent from either speech was any prediction of victory Tuesday. In television interviews last week, Perot boldly predicted that he would sweep all 50 states.

But Saturday in Tampa, Perot adopted an almost fatalistic tone.

“When you go to bed Tuesday night, I hope you go to bed saying, well, whatever else you’ve got to say about that guy, he loves his country and he sure loves us,” Perot said.

He also pointedly did not pledge to keep his volunteer effort alive after the election, as aides have suggested he would in recent days. Nor did he promise to “stay in the ring” after Nov. 3 with his volunteers, as he has at rallies and in television interviews since launching his candidacy on the CNN “Larry King Live” call-in program on Feb. 20.

Perot also plans to flood the airwaves tonight and Monday night with half-hour and hourlong programs promoting his candidacy and criticizing his opponents.

He has purchased blocks of time on ABC, CBS and NBC tonight to air a half-hour program titled “Deep Voodoo, Chicken Feathers and the American Dream,” contrasting his economic program with the “voodoo economics” of the Bush Administration and the poultry-based economy of Clinton’s Arkansas.

In Tampa on Saturday, he said that his candidacy this year was born of circumstances that are unlikely to be repeated in 1996 or thereafter.

“If we don’t take it back this year . . . ,” Perot said, without finishing his sentence. “Seize the moment,” he urged the Tampa crowd.

He asserted that there will never be another time when the electorate is so disenchanted with politics as usual that it would make the effort to put a viable independent candidate on the ballot who could support his campaign with limitless private funds for television advertising.

“What are the odds we’re going to have another opportunity when the American people put in all this creative energy and productive effort?” Perot asked.

“All that has to come together. This is a very special time,” he said.

Noting that Bush had called him “crazy” because of his allegations that the Republican Party had plotted to malign his daughter and disrupt her August wedding, Perot looked out on the rapt audience and said: “There’s a lot of crazy people out there.”

He urged his followers to round up every “crazy” person they know and go to the polls on Tuesday to surprise the pollsters and the political Establishment.

Although public opinion polls show support for Perot dropping as Election Day nears, few who attended the Perot rallies had any indecision about their votes.

Even if he has no chance to win, these loyalists intend to register their protest with a system they believe is bankrupt and corrupt.

“I hope and pray that America wakes up and changes its vote,” said Betty Helin, a 67-year-old widow who drove for two hours from Arcadia, Fla., to attend the Tampa rally.

A former Bush supporter, she said there is “no way” she will switch back to the President.

“People say I am wasting my vote with this man (Perot), but I don’t feel like that. This man has moved me so greatly I just had to be here.”

Ryan Diefel, 20, a first-time voter from St. Petersburg, said that he too could not be swayed by last-minute appeals from Bush and Clinton.

He said that the turnout for Perot would surprise the professional pundits and politicians and added that neither Bush nor Clinton is qualified to be President.

“We need a businessman, not just someone who’ll tell us what they think we want to hear,” he said.