Perot and Nixon

by William Safire

Date: May 8, 1992

Ross Perot used to make himself useful around the Nixon White House, in hopes of settling disputes his company was having with the Social Security Administration.

When we were battling the sinister forces of Vietnam protest in 1970, the short Texan with the Haldeman crew Cut came up with an idea to dramatize the vastness of our support.

He ran pro-Nixon, anti-protester ads in various cities, each containing a coupon to get a mail pull and build a mailing list. The Perot plan: to fill trucks with the returned-coupon mail and dump out the contents in front of cameras at the White House, proving that the people were spontaneously identifying with our "Silent Majority."

As a certified mind-twister, I attended a meeting with Nixon chief of staff H.R. Haldeman, his aide Alex Butterfield and press secretary Ron Ziegler. My contemporaneous notes show Haldeman asking for a report on the Silent Majority reaction to a Nixon speech: Where were the Perot letters?

Butterfield said Perot had reported he was holding onto all the letters in each of the cities where ads had been run.

"Where exactly are the letters?" asked Haldeman, who liked specifics.

"In banks," said Butterfield. "You mean," said Ziegler, smacking his forehead, "when reporters ask me, 'Where is the Silent Majority?,' I can say we have them locked up in bank vaults all over the country?"

"Yes," deadpanned Butterfield. "It's all part of 'One Nation Under God' Month."

Now, after all these years, I see the purpose of those letters: They were the seeds at the core of the up-from-the-people, Perot-for-President campaign.

Look, I have nothing personal against the barefoot boy from Easy Street. Anybody who kicked in a reported $200,000 to Nixon's '72 campaign - out of conviction about the war, or gratitude for favors, or the chance to show political insiderhood in board rooms - can't be all bad.

But it's troubling to see good people, tired of watching politicians trying clumsily to manipulate their emotions, throwing themselves into the arms of a master manipulator.

He strikes the pose of an amateur in politics, a surprised object of a grass-roots draft movement; in fact, Ross Perot is an old pro of 30 years' standing in the business-politics complex, and the financier of a candidacy that waters and cultivates its own long-green grass roots.

He sells the notion of being on the side of the "little guy." Yet when he went up against the entrenched and hidebound management of General Motors as a member of its board, instead of battling for the interests of stockholders he took a huge bundle of their money from the board in return for shutting up and tiptoeing away.

He pretends to be ready to balance our budget while solving our social ills - "no sweat"- but the Perot solution to urban violence is to allow a handgun in every pocket, opposing even a waiting period to see if the purchaser is a felon.

P.R. experts have to admire his little touches. The billionaire derides lobbyists "in their alligator shoes," dissociating himself ostentatiously from the trappings of wealth. The candidate with no idea of what to do longer than a soundbite snaps at questioners for dealing in soundbites.

The big touches are skilled, too: Having established himself in the polls by being all things to all men - the rallier of the general outrage - the putative savior of the Republic now deflects inquiry by withdrawing into the silences for 60 days to work out what he stands for.

Such an autocratic moratorium should give even believers in the tooth fairy pause. What kind of leader needs 60-day wonderment to decide his basic approach to complex issues?

Can a two-month cram course in popular positioning prepare anyone for the presidency?

The Perot candidacy is an amusing diversion for outrage groupies, their coupons destined for bank vaults. The rest of the electorate has a serious choice to make.