AUSTIN, TX — Self-made billionaire and two-time presidential candidate H. Ross Perot has died at the age of 89, according to multiple news reports on Tuesday.
The storied Texas businessman founded Electronic Data Systems Corp. in 1962 before launching Perot Systems Corp. 26 years later. Though diminutive, Perot had an outsize personality that helped fuel his short-lived, yet memorable, political rise.
The cause of death reportedly was leukemia.
Perot ran as an independent presidential candidate in the 1992 election and as a third-party candidate in the 1996 election. His folksy — and sometimes irascible — manner appealed to a wide swath of the electorate, particularly in his first run against George H.W. Bush and Democratic challenger Bill Clinton.
Yet his quest was criticized by just as many for having split the conservative vote, as many Republicans blamed him for funneling ballots from Bush, thus handing Clinton the victory. In his first campaign, Perot managed to secure the largest percentage of popular votes for a third-party candidate — a stunning 19 percent of the electorate —since the 1912 presidential bid of Theodore Roosevelt, according to historians.
As widely reported at the time, Perot spent $63.5 million of his own money during his first bid for the presidency — a stunning amount in 1992 just as it is today. Much of that money was spent on 30-minute television spots amounting to infomercials in which he used old-school yet colorful charts and graphs to illustrate his most salient points about the economy.
While displaying visual aids, he would punctuate his speech with a line that became something of a national catchphrase: “It’s just that simple.” That folksy, matter-of-fact manner of speaking in genuine Texas twang became fodder for impressionists — both professional and amateur, among grownups and kids alike, from the playground to the board room.
Comedian Dana Carvey of Saturday Night Live fame was among the most successful Perot impressionists, building something of a cottage industry in mimicking the curmudgeonly charismatic business tycoon’s no-nonsense, staccato-cadenced style of speaking:
The legendary businessman’s second presidential run was far less successful, the novelty of his first bid four years worn out and the once-fresh appeal of his messaging viewed by many more slogan than utilitarian. By his second try, he garnered a mere 8 percent of the vote. Gradually, the Reform Party he once envisioned as a political force in American politics disintegrated.
Born in Texarkana on June 27, 1930, Perot would often attribute his wealth to the tactics of those who lived through and survived the Great Depression who were forcefully methodical with their spending while being suffused with a strong work ethic. His financial rise from humble origins (his father was a cotton broker while his mother toiled as a secretary) only added to his legend, and secured him legions of admirers even among those not subscribing to his brand of politics.
Those of a certain age who may not have been politically savvy at the time primarily remember Perot as the de facto author of the “No Pass, No Play” policy that grounded some of the best high school athletes. The governor of Texas at the time, Mark White, appointed Perot in 1984 to lead a commission studying public education reform in the Lone Star State. The outgrowth of his work came in the form of HB 72, dictating that students pass their academic courses before being allowed to participate in extracurricular activities that included athletics.
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Perot’s zeal as head of the commission led to a number of educational reforms ultimately passed by the Texas Legislature — the most infamous among those the dreaded “No Pass, No Play” initiative that barred athletic play among students not meeting the rigors of academic study. Those attended high school football games at the time saw the “Friday Night Lights” figuratively dimmed as a result, yielding ire by many at Perot for those early forays into politics to be replaced in later years with awe over his improbable political rise and populist appeal.
His presidential runs may be a distant memory by this point to some, but his one-liners and folksy wisdom have remained part of the Texas nomenclature to this day. Among the most memorable Perot pearls of wisdom:
The populist messaging was not only effective, but yielded something of a template for future politicians to follow. With varying degrees of success, subsequent populist candidates would come to sound vaguely Perot-like in both cadence and decibel level to those in Texas who knew him the best. Some of those future politicians have minted political currency from the Perot primer with great success.
His way of thinking about political matters and effective use of pithy slogans has proved prescient if not practical, lending credence to the idea of political past being prologue. Take trade, for instance. In debates leading to the 1992 presidential race, he decried the trend of companies using foreign labor as cost-saving measure: “We have got to stop sending jobs overseas,” he would say. He likened the effects of that corporate tactic as it related to the since-revamped North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as a giant “sucking sound” as jobs left the U.S.