Ross Perot

Quick Take

Maverick Texas businessman H. Ross Perot wants to revolutionize America's historic two-party system if not as president then as founder of the fledgling Reform Party. Despite his rocky on-off-on-again presidential bid, Perot managed in 1992 to steal 19 percent of the vote -- the best third-candidate showing since Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose run in 1912. With that momentum and a billion in the bank, the feisty founder of Dallas-based Electronic Data Systems Corp. embarked on party building, energizing some 1.3 million disenfranchised voters, all the while insisting the effort "isn't about me."

Though the Texan has lost some luster -- he stumbled debating Vice President Al Gore on NAFTA in 1993, and detractors regularly call him egotistical, dictatorial and paranoid -- Perot's economic nationalism still find pockets of support (Pat Buchanan is hot on the issue). Charts in hand, the feisty Texan is still hammering his top concerns -- balancing the federal budget, reforming campaign laws, and passing a constitutional amendment requiring public referendums on all tax hikes. As always, folksy, homespun metaphors abound (who but Perot could get away with likening the federal deficit to "the crazy aunt in the basement"?) Polls show Perot getting no more than around 10 percent support this November, and from less educated, more blue-collar voters. If he's unlikely to win the election, he'll certainly stir things up and put pressure on Washington to clean up its finances.

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