Propelled Toward Change : Still Considering the Perot Factor

WASHINGTON —  Ross Perot has done powerful things no independent presidential candidate has ever done: lead the Republican and Democratic contenders in national polls; spend $60 million of his own fortune campaigning, and even flirt with absurdity on “60 Minutes.” Now, however, there’s a slim chance he could do something else unprecedented in U.S. politics: divide the pro-change vote and reelect a worn-out President he despises and a majority of his fellow citizens say they want defeated.

All it might take is targeting millions of dollars on TV to wind up with 14%, 15% or 17% of the ballots and so undercut the popular favorite. No 20th-Century third-party contender has ever had that result. Most such candidates haven’t mattered much. Even when they did, the popularly preferred major-party candidate wound up winning. The closest call was in 1968, when George C. Wallace’s 13.5% almost denied victory to Richard M. Nixon, who won by less than one point. Four years later, Wallace voters backed Nixon by 3 to 1, but in 1968, Wallace almost changed history. The possibility that Perot could still do so in 1992 is not great, but even the outside chance is symptomatic of one of the most frazzling and disturbing years in U.S. political history.

For many voters, this has been a year of unhappy choices--of wanting to replace a failed GOP incumbent while doubting his Democratic challenger. In a perverse way, it has become a test of Americans’ continuing willingness to gamble on something new when they are tired of what they have.

If voters get their apparent wish, George Bush will lose; Bill Clinton will win, but with too small a margin to be cocky, and Perot will get his ticket punched as a national watchdog. It takes a billionaire populist to be able to afford 30-minute network TV infomercials and use “Larry King Live.”

Of course, things could still go awry. The polls could be all wet, and Bush could eke out a 39% or 42% victory. Samplings in a three-way race are unreliable. It’s even remotely possible that Perot, notwithstanding his seeming paranoia and his recent poll shrinkage, could surge at the last minute into the 20s, making the Clinton-Bush race tight, maybe carrying a few states, blocking any Electoral College majority and throwing selection of the next President into the House of Representatives.

These Perot aftershocks would be bad for the country--not because of ideology but because of historical precedent and fragile public confidence. The U.S. electorate has reached a point with Bush where to have him as President for another four years could be a miscarriage of national political effectiveness. Remember, Bush has sunk to roughly 35% in two different types of polls--voter approval of the job he’s doing as President and support for him in a three-way race with Clinton and Perot.

Historically, no President has ever been reelected with numbers like these. In fact, no 20th-Century President has ever been reelected to a second term with less than 49% of the vote--Woodrow Wilson in 1916 and Harry S. Truman in 1948 both won just 49%. All other incumbents have done better. Anybody with numbers like Bush’s has either retired or been defeated.

So imagine the circumstances of a Bush victory with 42%--or worse, 39%. His reelection would have been opposed by almost two-thirds of the population. Even Herbert Hoover got 40% in 1932, after presiding over the Great Depression. For many Americans, reelection of so discredited a President would be depressing. Gridlock would be omnipresent. Congressional Democrats contemptuous of campaign rhetoric and deceptive broadcast commercials could spend four years fighting him. The press is full of speculation about 1993 congressional investigations, grand juries and indictments in Bush Administration scandals ranging from Iraqgate to new revelations of Bush’s knowledge in Iran-Contra.

Even under normal circumstances, reelected Presidents’ second terms have generally accomplished less than their first. In Bush’s case, with so little achieved--particularly in domestic policy--the thought of a second term that’s less successful than the first is chilling.

The second potential problem would be another Perot surge, where the billionaire somehow makes it a tight Bush-Clinton race and even carries a few Western states. In that case, however unlikely, there’s a far-out chance that his electoral votes could throw the election into the House of Representatives. The inevitable Democratic majority in the House would select Clinton, logically enough because he would have been the choice in a two-man race.

Yet such a selection process would taint Clinton and strip away any real mandate. And the country doesn’t need a pre-shrunk Clinton Administration any more than it needs the fluke reelection of a President who’s unacceptable to his fellow citizens.

OK, it’s virtually impossible for Perot to make the election a three-way race. Reports in mid-October showed him neck and neck, or close, in states like Alaska, Wyoming, Colorado and Arizona. But Perot now seems back in the 13%-17% range, and he could tumble into the 10%-15% range by Tuesday--with a majority of soft Perotists going back to Clinton.

Even with a clear win, though, the precedents for Clinton are mixed. His late-October campaigning was mediocre. Though his populist-tinged centrism seems broadly saleable, he’s lacking in experience and personal credibility to a degree that usually means defeat--and could mean that this year. Keep in mind that Presidents almost never win the White House on their first try, needing a second or third try before voters get comfortable with them as national figures. The only postwar exception has been Jimmy Carter, itself a reason for caution.

Whatever happens, Democrats and Republicans should consider themselves seriously chastened. Polls in May and June revealed a solid majority of Americans favored the emergence of a third party, and Perot’s October renaissance has stirred some of these same spirits. A new politics could be in the wind.

Should Clinton win after receiving 44% of the vote, Bush 41% and Perot 15%, Clinton’s mandate would be greatly reduced--not tainted, but clearly hedged. In the event that the new Democratic President failed to revitalize the economy or otherwise live up to his commitment to the worried American middle class, he, too, could face a multiple 1996 challenge--not merely from some second-string Republican like Dan Quayle, Jack F. Kemp or Sen. Phil Gramm, but by Perot again or some third force the Texas billionaire might support.

The Democrats, then, have good reason not to assume that any Clinton victory ensures the start of a new Democratic presidential supremacy. To be sure, several of America’s past party presidential cycles have begun with a weak victory in a three-way or four-way race--Abraham Lincoln’s 39% in 1860 and Nixon’s 43% in 1968. And should Clinton turn in an economic success, his first election would emerge as a watershed.

For 1993-96, however, economic failure remains a major possibility--with the further caveat that the Democratic-Republican party system may also be weaker than at any time since its creation in the 1850s. A Clinton Administration that only had to worry about Republicans could breath easier. The limited credibility of the opposition would be an important cushion against political failure.

But if Perot winds up receiving 14%, 16% or 18% of the vote on Tuesday, he’ll have unnerved Bush in a number of Western states and driven him down to the weakest showing of any GOP President running for reelection since Hoover. If Bush loses, party fratricide will be omnipresent, and Perot’s maneuvers could be a factor. If the Democrats lose after having been ahead 25 to 30 points, their intraparty bloodletting could be even more gruesome.

Somebody has to be elected on Tuesday. The real question is whether he will be able to govern.