Ross Perot (1930–2019)
Five days ago America lost a patriot. Mainstream media will not acknowledge that so I do so now. Perot was born in Texas to a middle class family. After high school he honorably served in the US Navy. After leaving he became a salesman for IBM, where he rose through the ranks. In the early 60s he founded Electronic Data Systems which became a very profitable company which he sold to General Motors in 1984 for over two billion dollars. He continued to found and invest in several computer based companies throughout the 80s.
Perot was well known but it wasn’t until he decided to run for president in 1992 that he became a household name. Instead of taking the typical politicians route, Perot decided that in order to really make a difference he had to run as an independent. Unlike most candidates he based his platform on balancing the budget and creating jobs.
From the beginning, Perot’s campaign was completely different. Rather than appeal to voters using catchphrases and rhetoric, Perot did his best to make policies the forefront of his campaign and he successfully brought substance to the election which made things harder for then Governor Bill Clinton who was big on style and light on substance. The cornerstone of Perots campaign were long commercials where he explained economic issues using charts, graphs, statistics, and cited sources. Not something we could imagine Joe Biden or Donald Trump doing today.
His campaign tactics worked well as polling showed Perot leading in the 3-man race, until he suddenly dropped out. When he returned to the race a couple months later, he had lost a lot of momentum and despite a strong performance in the presidential debates,on election day he walked away with 0 electoral votes and just under 20% of the vote this is still the strongest showing by a 3rd party candidate since Theodore Roosevelt.
Perots presidential election is well remembered to this day but some of his earlier and arguably more important political contributions have been forgotten by the mainstream. His first major entry into politics came when he involved himself in the POW/MIA issue. After the United States pulled out of Vietnam many believed there were still American soldiers trapped in the country, with some estimates believing more than one thousand American prisoners of war were still in Vietnam. Perot firmly believe this to be the case and accused government officials of covering it up. Perot focused on this issue for over a decade and communicated with the government of Vietnam in hopes of finding out more about the lost POWs. He did not succeed but he put in more effort and money into the issue than any other private citizen.
In 1979 he entered the international political fray again when the Iranian government imprisoned two of Perots employees because of a contract dispute. Perot himself organized and paid for their rescue. (This operation was a success and was made into a book and film called “On Wings of Eagles).
Perot has often been painted as a kooky businessman whose presidential campaign was a novelty. The reality is that Ross Perot was an extremely successful businessman, who cared deeply for Americans and was willing to put his money where his mouth was. He was a true outsider who didn’t fit in with any party and was not afraid of voicing a controversial opinion. Rather than dumb down elections he raised the discourse and history has shown him to be right on many issues. In short he was the real Donald Trump and it is a damn shame that we didn’t get the chance to see him in office.
