R.I.P. Ross Perot

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Mister Tee
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Re: R.I.P. Ross Perot

Post by Mister Tee »

Sabin wrote:
Greg wrote
2: Bush Sr. lost because he was an incumbent President running for reelection in a bad economy.
I'm going off of the Allan Lichtman 13 Keys to the White House model which shows six keys turned against Bush Sr. in 1992, including the Third Party key. Lichtman's model would suggest that Bush Sr. would've kept the White House if Perot didn't run. I understand what exit polling data suggests about Perot taking from both equally. That said, Ross Perot's run creating a unique three-candidate election that might have favored a candidate like Bill Clinton. When electability is a candidate's major concern (as Bill Clinton's scandal-plagued run would suggest), a kooky third partier like Perot only serves to make him look more electable by contrast. I also just don't think George H.W. Bush was a talented enough politician to stave off two major challengers. One perhaps.
It's tricky to pinpoint Perot's effect on the 1992 outcome. Disgruntled Republicans like to claim Perot "cost" Bush re-election, which, as Sabin notes (and pundits have explained for decades), is belied by all the polling that showed Perot voters would either not have voted, or split exactly evenly between Clinton and Bush. Give Clinton's solid 5-point margin, he'd still have won easily, though Perot probably did hand him a few electoral votes (like Montana and Georgia) that would have narrowed the EC outcome.

On the other hand, Lichtman is correct that the existence of a third-party candidate that strong was important in Bush's defeat, but I look at it from the opposite direction of the Bush partisans: the fact that so many people wanted to vote against Bush even while not being willing to vote Democrat indicated just how deep a failure his presidency was viewed. It was not unlike 1968, when the long-running Democratic coalition had cracked, but voters unwilling to switch all the way to Republican chose Wallace as a halfway house. The Nixon/Reagan coalition was coming apart by 1992, but voters who'd spent a quarter-century hating Dems weren't ready to swing all the way over, and Perot offered a comfortable nesting place. Most of those voters were aware they were probably electing Clinton, and were OK with that result as long as it idn't have their fingerprints on it.
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Re: R.I.P. Ross Perot

Post by Sabin »

Greg wrote
2: Bush Sr. lost because he was an incumbent President running for reelection in a bad economy.
I'm going off of the Allan Lichtman 13 Keys to the White House model which shows six keys turned against Bush Sr. in 1992, including the Third Party key. Lichtman's model would suggest that Bush Sr. would've kept the White House if Perot didn't run. I understand what exit polling data suggests about Perot taking from both equally. That said, Ross Perot's run creating a unique three-candidate election that might have favored a candidate like Bill Clinton. When electability is a candidate's major concern (as Bill Clinton's scandal-plagued run would suggest), a kooky third partier like Perot only serves to make him look more electable by contrast. I also just don't think George H.W. Bush was a talented enough politician to stave off two major challengers. One perhaps.
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Re: R.I.P. Ross Perot

Post by Greg »

1: Perot was completely off on the "national debt," as it was all based on the false assumption that the Federal Government needs to borrow money in order to run deficits.

2: Bush Sr. lost because he was an incumbent President running for reelection in a bad economy.
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R.I.P. Ross Perot

Post by Sabin »

Major figure in the first election I can remember. He may have been kooky but he wasn't a joke. He's definitely a forerunner to Donald Trump as the celebrity billionaire outsider whose appeal lies in "straight talk." Everybody thought he was crazy with his charts talking about the budget and the deficit but he tapped into something. Bill Clinton's entire Presidency was consumed with dealing with the budget. Today, more than Reaganomics or Compassionate Conservatism, The Tea Party had its footing in Perotnomics.

And according to Allan Lichtman, the Third Party key threw the 1992 election to the Democrats. This is hotly debated. I believe it if only because I just don't think George H.W. Bush was a good enough politician to fight off attacks from the right and the left. Or perhaps he just made Clinton look more electable by comparison. If that's to be believed, then Perot gave us President Bill Clinton.



https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/09/politics ... index.html

Washington (CNN)Ross Perot, the billionaire tycoon who mounted two unsuccessful third-party presidential campaigns in the 1990s, died Tuesday, family spokesman James Fuller confirmed to CNN. He was 89.

Perot died after a five-month battle with leukemia, Fuller said.

A billionaire by his mid-50s after he sold a controlling interest in the data processing business he founded to General Motors for $2.5 billion, Perot's foray into presidential politics made him one of the more colorful political figures of the 1990s.

His Texas twang, populist platform -- he memorably railed against the North American Free Trade Agreement, warning of a "giant sucking sound" of American jobs to other countries if passed -- and frequent TV appearances brought him wide recognition, and his 1992 campaign, in which he garnered nearly 19% of the vote and finished third behind Bill Clinton and incumbent President George H.W. Bush, remains one of the most successful third-party bids in American history.

For years, Bush blamed Perot for his defeat, saying in a 2012 HBO documentary that he believed Perot "cost me the election." Election experts and scholarly research, however, has challenged that theory: The New York Times found Perot's effect on the outcome of the election "appears to have been minimal," and The Washington Post reported Clinton would have still won by a large margin if Perot hadn't run.

In 1995, Perot created the Reform Party, and the following year received 8% of the vote in the presidential election as the party's candidate.

Following his second and final bid for the presidency, Perot served as president and CEO of Perot Systems Corporation, which he founded in 1988. He was the head of the company until 2000, when he passed the title on to his son, Ross Perot Jr.

Nine years later, Dell Incorporated bought Perot Systems for $3.9 billion, which was a net gain of about $400 million for the Perot family.

Aside from his business and political careers, Perot also received national attention for his efforts during the Vietnam War to create better conditions for US prisoners of war. He traveled to Laos, where he met with ambassadors from Russia and North Vietnam, and was awarded the Medal for Distinguished Public Service by the Department of Defense in 1974 for his efforts. In 1979, when two EDS employees were taken hostage during a revolution in Iran, he organized and paid for a successful private mission called Operation Hotfoot to rescue the men and bring them home.

"In business and in life, Ross was a man of integrity and action. A true American patriot and a man of rare vision, principle and deep compassion, he touched the lives of countless people through his unwavering support of the military and veterans and through his charitable endeavors," Fuller said in a statement. "Ross Perot will be deeply missed by all who loved him. He lived a long and honorable life."
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