From: rl24@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Robert Lamoureux)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.perot
Subject: Re: 1-800-925-1300
Date: 9 Oct 92 20:36:57 GMT
Reply-To: rl24@cunixa.cc.columbia.edu (Robert Lamoureux)
Organization: Columbia University

In article <1992Oct9.143053.5160@aio.jsc.nasa.gov> walker@superboy.jsc.nasa.gov writes:
>In article <1992Oct5.154712.20208@ornl.gov>, de5@ORNL.GOV (Dave Sill) writes:
>|> In article <1992Oct2.193504.27591@aio.jsc.nasa.gov>, walker@superboy.jsc.nasa.gov (Doug Walker) writes:
>|> >
>|> >1)  I don't think he will resign.  When he starts something he follows
>|> >through.  Cite one example where this has not been the case.
>|> 
>|> Here're two: his candidacy and his tenure at GM.  Pulling out of the race at
>|> the height of one's popularity and re-entering one month before the election
>|> is *not* how one follows through on one's pledge to run a world-class
>|> campaign.  Accepting a huge sum of money for one's resignation is not how one
>|> reorganizes a large corporation.
>|> 
>
>Ah, I was hoping someone would take me up on this one.  Great.
>
>Lets take your points one at a time.
>
>1) Pulling out of the race.
>
>Please explain to me how someone who had never ANNOUNCED his candidacy
>could pull out?  

This is an issue of semantics, at best; if he wasn't a candidate, why
did he feel the need to announce the fact that he wasn't running?
The bottom line is this: after telling his "volunteers" that he would
run if they got him on the ballot in all 50 states, he reneged.  That
he came back later and ultimately fulfilled his word is regarded by 
many of his former supporters (including me) as a face-saving measure
as much as anything else.

>Also, Perot saw, as I did, the democratic party at the
>convention address real issues and actually perform admirably.  I was
>quite impressed as was Perot evidently.  Where Perot's assessment and
>mine difered is that I realized that the only reason the dems were
>acting so rational waas because Perot was in the race.  I realized at
>the time that if Perot dropped out of the race it would be back to dirty
>politics as usual.  As it was.  

I disagree.  I think the Democrats continued to show a willingness to
discuss the issues, primarily because doing so could only help them.
Remember the sign on the campaign office in Little Rock: "The economy,
stupid!"  Clinton knew from the beginning of the campaign that if he
focused on the one issue that most Americans felt most strongly about,
he couldn't lose.  As usual, Bush was the one to start the side show:
four years ago, it was flag-burning; this year, it's war protests.

>Also, I think Perot felt as if his
>organization was being taken over by the professional handlers (Ed
>Rollins and Hamiltom Jordan and their staffs) and he did not like that,
>or the deriction that these people were taking him.  If they had stayed
>aboard you would see Perot commercials that looked like Bush commercials
>in '88.  Lots of flag waving and such, not commercials which really
>address the issues facing this country. 

Agreed.  Although he didn't have to drop out of the race to get rid of
Rollins & Jordan; what's wrong with just bagging them?


[Deletion of the GM discussion]

>This I believe addresses your points, which, of course, were the exact
>issues that I assummed that would be raised.  If you need more info or
>can come up with some other attack on Perot, I'll be waiting.
>
>Doug
>
>PS  I would rather hear how you agree or disagree with the problems or
>the solution to the problems that he points out.
>
Well, I'm not going to "attack" Perot, but I'm not going to vote for
him, either.  When this all started last spring, the man I was going
to vote for (and I still believe to be the best of all the candidates
I've seen) was Paul Tsongas.  Unfortunately, Tsongas had the personal
appeal of a grapefruit, and wasn't sexy enough for the voters.  He
dropped out of the race just before the primary, and my "protest vote"
wound up going to Jerry Brown; if nothing else, he appealed to me in 
the way he ran his campaign.  (I do think that major campaign reform 
is necessary.)  When it became apparent that Clinton was going to win
the nomination, I looked into Perot and Clinton, the men I felt to be 
the only remaining viable options.  And I preferred Perot's ideas
to Clinton's, and supported him until his dropout in July.  Left with
the option of Bush and Clinton, the choice was clear to me.

Why haven't I reconsidered Perot since his re-entry?  Because I think
his dropping out of the race was simply a campaign strategy, designed
to allow him to elude the intense scrutiny that the other two candi-
dates were undergoing.  In a May interview with a local TV station
(before he had declared or not), he told a reporter that he planned
to announce in October.  "An October surprise?" the reporter shouted
back.  "Yeah, something like that," beamed ol' HRP, and vanished.
He seems to me to be jerking the voters around, and I just don't
feel compelled to support a man like that.  I also have *SERIOUS*
doubts that he could do any of the admittedly good things he claims
he will, since he will be working with a hostile Congress, but that's
a whole other story.

Rob L.

Clinton/Gore '92
Newsgroups: alt.politics.perot