Because You Never Asked

ROSS PEROT

     (Once again, as I put it up on my website in 2007, I remind the reader this essay was written way back in the early 90’s. It was the infant version of an issue which would mature into well developed adult life in these pages as the years wore on.)

     As heretical as that last essay might sound (anything not premised on a cheap and secure supply of oil might be deemed heresy these days), the idea that our democracy is flawed, that it is not all it should be, is beginning to seep into the American consciousness. Does my vote really count for anything? Aren’t all the candidates pretty much the same? Who am I compared to all the lobbyists, corporations and big contributors who bankroll and control all these elections and candidates?

     There is a crisis of faith in our institutions, and rightly so. So into the breech jumps someone like ---

     --- Jerry Brown, who wants to “take back America”. Unfortunately for Jerry, he is already overly associated with the America that got away, and he has a shady history of revelry and fornication with glamorous people, which is OK for well hung negro basketball players, but not for the emotional leader of a nation that sits on the edge of its telephone answering machines.

     --- or someone like ---

     Ross Perot.

     Ross Perot has a lot going for him. For one thing, he’s cute but not sexy. This is a dynamite combination in American politics because there are millions of voters who really don’t like it if someone is having too much sex with too many people (meaning more than 1 or 0), mainly because they don’t. How can anyone with an honest to God pompadour be having lots of sex? They feel comfortable with Ross Perot. He looks like a jillionaire Alfred E. Newman. Let him have his billions as long as he’s not having more sex than the rest of us. “What, me worry?”

     Ross Perot doesn’t offend me but the logic behind his popularity is absurd. In examining this phenomena, we find an electorate that is fed up. All the candidates are controlled by powerful financial interests that pay for their campaigns. It might be true you can lose an election in spite of a huge campaign treasure chest, but it is extremely difficult to win without one. This gives the candidates no freedom to operate. They are now just fronts for the “PACS” and lobbyists who control their careers. Who are we voting for; Senator Slick, or the backstage interests he has to answer to? How can we break this vicious cycle?

     By voting for Ross Perot?

     What a ludicrous idea. Voting for Ross Perot does only one thing --- it eliminates the middle man; no more lobbyists, no more PAC money, no more of this shadowy backdrop of financial power operating in a covert manner. With Ross Perot, we put the lobbyist, with his own personal fortune, right in the White House.

     This is something like trading cancer for heart disease.

     The true disease that is rotting the core of our system is something I will surely speak out on more as this work runs its course, that being the gargantuan sums of money needed to run for political office. Simply electing someone who’s personal fortune makes him immune to such groveling is not only no solution, it’s a very dangerous precedent. It might be looked upon as a call for benevolent dictatorship, which is not only not in harmony with the Yankee soul, is never benevolent in the hyper-competitiveness of a culture like ours.

     If Ross Perot would run for office in a system where his money had little to do with his access to the voters, I’d be glad to listen. Until that time comes, I see no reason to consider Ross Perot as anything new or hopeful in American politics.

     (Post Script, 2007- How depressingly prophetic that last paragraph turned out to be. It’s been almost two decades since the inception of this essay, and the problem has only gotten worse, almost exponentially worse. Down through the years I’ve written numerous essays showing how easy it would be to solve this problem, thus exposing the blatant insincerity of the “powers to be” in fixing it. In spite of all the rhetoric and vituperation spewed forth with regard to campaign reform, they like things just the way they are.)             

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Email: JerryG@postcman.info