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What Perot Supporters Should Do Now
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10425 |
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Section : |
CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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2 / 1993 |
2,335 Words |
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Major Garrett
Major Garrett is a national reporter for the Washington
Times. |
So you voted for Ross Perot. Who cares? He lost. And lost big. Didn't win even one state. Closest he came to winning was in Maine. Finished second there. Spend at least $65 million (probably a lot more) for 19.2 million votes, or $3.42 per vote. And what did it get him?
Well, for one thing, not as many people think of him as a kook now as once did. Now, most people think of him as the kook who spooked the two leading parties into actually talking about the annual federal deficit and the national debt (about $333 billion and $4 trillion, respectively).
He not only forced Republicans and Democrats to admit their complicity, but also went some distance in explaining to the uninitiated just how difficult it would be to erase the deficit and begin retiring the debt. No small feat considering every wise guy and wise girl in Washington, and I mean everyone, had been saying for years that nobody would vote for president because of the deficit or the debt.
What's more, he brought millions of new voters to the polls. And for a few precious months, before jilting his followers, Perot reminded many of us what participatory democracy was all about.
In his restarted campaign, Perot showed how a novice with megabucks could break every rule of modern campaigning 30-minute infomercials drawing 12-17 million viewers? And triple his popularity ratings by half in one month.
"It was a success," said pollster Frank Luntz, who worked for Perot during his initial campaign. "Maybe the campaign failed, but the message succeeded."
But what if you voted for Perot? What if you wanted to vote for Perot but didn't because of some decrepit fealty to one of the two major parties that you now regret?
What do you do? What can you do?
There are three things.
First ignore the media. Because if you believe the national media, you'll soon conclude that the whole Perot effort means absolutely nothing.
According to the Washington cognoscenti, the fact that 19.2 million voters cast their ballot for a
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