Topic: National Debt
The Return of Ross Perot Ross Perot is back in response to a diminishing public demand.He brings with him the same diaganosis and the same lame prescription.by rtbohan
(libertarian)
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Ross Perot, the businessman and two time candidate for President of the United States has stepped back onto the public stage through a new web site (http://perotcharts.com). Just as promised, the charts are there, and they show the same thing they showed before: the federal defict is huge and growing larger. But Mr.Perot is not offering much in the way of a solution other than that the government must spend less and live within its means. This is true, of course, but Mr. Perot has an oversimplified answer which at least some of the visitors to his site are pointing out. They are not like Larry King, who swallowed everything Mr. Perot said as revelation from God and served as an advance man for Mr. Perot's presidential aspirartions.
In 1992, it seemed to a great many people that Mr. Perot could remake the American political landscape. He appeared to be a man who would tell the truth, who saw the basic problems America faced and might bring fresh thinking to Washingon. He made a series of visits to Larry King Live, and King began asking him on each visit if he were going to run for President as an independent candidate. Perot finally announced that he would run as a candidate dedicated to reforming the government and lowering government spending, and the Reform Party was born.
The early polls showed Perot in the lead, but he soon proved himself a skittish and inept candidate. First he brought in a campaign consultant who assured him that winning depended on his campaigning as a conventional candidate. The first step in this process was to speak to a group of black opinion leaders, where he made the mistake of telling them what "you people" ought to do. He fired the sonsultant, and then announced that he was withdrawing from the race because someone was blackmailing his daughter by threatening to spoil her wedding if her father did not withdraw. He later changed his story about what motivated him to withdraw and announced he had changed his mind again and wanted to be preident. He was allowed to participate in the candidate debates and made a respectable showing in the popular vote. Republicans blamed him for the defeat of George H.W. Bush in the election, and that may have been true.
In 1996, he ran a secondtime, but the novelty was gone. He did not attract enough early support to qualify for the candidate debates and never had the enthiastic support he had had in 1992. In 2000, after sending mixed signals to his supporters, he announced his intention not to accept the nomination of the Reform Party for a third time. He then withdrew from participation in the party, which was taken over by the supporters of Pat Buchanan and disappeared from the political scence.
And now he is back with his charts and his partial solutions. The charts he presents on his website are basically the same as he used in his first foray into the political arena. But they are charts that are available in a great many other places as well, including from the government. And rather than being overwhelmed by graphic representations of the economic status of the United States, some of the visitors are asking pertinent questions. A graph showing the increase in government spendingand the national debt over the last forty years is not telling the visitor to the site anything new. One commenter pointed out that a more relevant chart would show the increase in terms of constant dollars rather than simply using the dollar amount from each year. This is a valid point because while government spending and the national debt are undeoubtedly important, using constant dollars would show that there are other factors in inflation. Charts can be accurate without being informative, and they can be accurate and still be misleading. It is a question of what the chart is measuring and the interpretation of the chart. Perot places most of the blame on entitlement programs and singles out medicare as a particular problem. I agree that medicare is part of the problem, but Perot does not seem to consider corporate welfare or the military spending to support an imperialis foreign policy, nation building and the maintenance of foreign military bases to be a problem. And he does not consider the fact that the reform of the money system is necessary as part of any economic reform. Ron Paul does take these things into account, which is why he has created a more serious and lasting movement in the country.
The quesitons about the reappearance of Mr. Perot are "Why?" and Why now?" The answer to the first question is apparently the Mr. Perot, even if he has put presidential ambitions aside, misses being a public man and hopes to be seen again as the guru of reform. The answer to the second question is that Ron Paul has ended his campaign for the Republican nomination for President. As one commenter on the Perot site asked, if Perot supports reform why did he not endorse Ron Paul? The answer given was that there is nothing political about the site, it is simply educational. But this does not answer the question as asked and while it disclaims any intent to become political in the future, that is not enough.
Visit the web site. See what you think. I think that Mr. Perot still sees himself as the leader of reform in American and waited until Ron Paul ended his campaign in the hope that he would attract the disappointed Paul supporters to his side, even if he has not political ambitions. I think also that he will find that the revolution has passed him by
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The views expressed in this
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Interesting take, and you may be right about the simplifaction, but I wonder if simple is not a good place to start.
I like your analysis of the elections.
It's hardly like he's cashing in on Paul publicity-one thing Perot does not need more of is cash.
If the info has not changed, perhaps that means the problem has not either?
Why criticize him? Seems there are plenty of other worthy targets out there-perhaps the solution is simple after all-stop writing the checks, government gets smaller.
If Perot can open a few peepers, more power to him. He could just go buy an Island, or small Continent, and retire you know. Thank's, Ross.
Posted By: Paula Collins
Date: 2008-06-19 21:45:55
Everyone has a right to their opinion(s). However, it is important that the facts are correct in order to make an informed opinion. The Reform Party was not "born" in 1992. The Perot movement gave up party status to become a watch-doy group - United We Stand America. Perot did get almost 20% of the vote in '92. Because of those numbers, the political parties felt they would not make the same mistake again in '96. And even though he had a great deal of support, they would not allow him to join the debates. There was a great deal of protest - to know avail. Much like what Ron Paul is going through. They wouldn't report on anything he was doing, and they wouldn't allow him to participate in much of anything.
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