How Ross Perot Changed Both Major Parties
26th September 2024
Ross Perot’s theme song for his 1992 independent presidential run was the classic country weeper “Crazy,” written by Willie Nelson and made famous by Patsy Cline. It certainly seemed appropriate for a quixotic bid that ultimately failed to win the White House, as has every independent or third-party effort since Abraham Lincoln.
But victory at the polls is only one way to measure the success of independent and third-party presidential efforts. For in many ways, Perot’s two futile candidacies – he ran again in 1996 –provided a preview of today’s political scene.
Political author Michael Barone has said that “no third-party candidate could succeed in America unless he had a billion dollars and a household name.” Ross Perot, of course had both. As the founder of Electronic Data Systems, he became a tech billionaire at a time when most Texas fortunes were still based on oil and cattle. By the 1980s, when he began dabbling in politics, Perot was already one of the richest men in Texas. And the tale of his 1979 rescue of two EDS employees held hostage in Iran made him the subject of both a best-selling novel and a made-for-TV movie starring Charlton Heston.
I’m not ashamed to say that I voted for Ross Perot and never regretted it.