Posted on 07/09/2019 7:38:54 AM PDT by Bonemaker
When I was in 4th grade in 1963 in TX, our class project was for each of us to make a yarn octopus as a toy for poor children. For this effort, Perot gave each one of us a Morgan silver dollar.
I cast my first every vote for him :(
Voting for Trump completed my lifelong desire to see a businessman in charge of the country.
After the 1992 election, Perot was in cahoots with the Hillarycare scheme.
“I would never have voted for Perot, as he was pro-abort...”
So was Bush, he just didn’t have the guts to state it openly by the time he was running for president.
Ross was a Liberal populist. His computer technology empire was built on 2st gaining the government’s social security & medicare processing monopoly in Texas. With those contracts in hand and bringing in the revenue, he expanded.
Then he thought he could try to show Wall Street how to computerized. He made contracts with a number of Wall Street firms to do their computerization A-Z.
What he accomplished was the firms he made the contracts with became so indebted to Perot that he agreed to “bail them out” by gaining stakes in their companies.
In that process he became the major share owner in a few Wall Street firms, most importantly Dupont, and the oldest brokerage on Wall Street at the time, Walston & Company. He then merged them into a new company and before very long it was bankrupt. But of course his information technology company loss nothing on the deal with its business continuing to grow in other industries.
Those who knew the Dupont & Walston experience with Perot first hand considered him a thief who only went to Wall Street to get what money he could out of Wall Street no matter the cost to the Wall Street firms he did business with, including no matter that those costs would eventually bankrupt them.
Yes, computerization was a growing and important step on Wall Street in the 1970s, and all the firms had to get into it or get clobbered by competitors. But those that chose to get into bed with Perot for that effort did not live long enough to regret it - they went out of business.
As far as Perot and politics go Perot should best be remembered as the key to securing the election of Billary, Inc. Minus Perot I doubt seriously Clinton could have gained the White House, at least not in the year he first did.
This guy helped criminal clintoon. That is enough to rate being disremembered.
“George HW Bush was the one MOST RESPONSIBLE for Clinton.”
Absolutely correct.
While my GHW Bush supporters complained about Clinton during his administration, I asked “how are Clinton and Bush that different other than the sex?”. By the ‘92 Election, I believed Bush and Clinton were connected at the hip with Mena drugs and globalization.
Perot was the alternative in 1992. His flaking out was regrettable.
“...Perot was in cahoots with the Hillarycare scheme....”
He saw a way to make money on it! Sell it the IT system (likely manage!) it needed. Rightness or wrongness of Hellarycare not his problem!
I’ve heard from people that Perot’s business ethics were a little suspect. (One hears lots of things over a career! Some true some not!) Supposedly one of the reasons he hated Bush I was because somehow Perot got it in his head that Bush I cost EDS/ Perot Systems a big contract. Bush I promised to get it for EDS/Perot Systems (or Perot thought he did!) but didn’t deliver.
Those are stories I heard well working in Texas in that time period.
In 1983, I was working for EDS on Project Viable, an ambitious effort to run all the standard Army data systems through five regional data centers (RDCs). It was, at the time, the largest fixed-price contract ever awarded. I was on the installation team that spent more than two years visiting 40 or so Army bases to train the technical staff on the new systems. Among many other things, this involved a shift from using card decks to terminals and keyboards.
Shortly after RDC1 opened in Springfield VA, Ross came by for a visit and pep rally. He then shook hands with everyone, toured the cubicles, and asked a number of insightful questions. The area was uncharacteristically neat, since the mid-level managers had ordered us to clean up the massive stacks of printouts and binders the day before. My neighbor was out that day, so her cube was still piled high with all manner of stuff.
Ross walked around a corner, saw the junkyard, laughed, and said, "Now, that's more like it!" Someone next to Ross said, quietly, "They made us pick everything up." The middle managers were mildly embarrassed. Ross and the installation team were vastly amused. We liked him better for that than anything he said during the pep rally.
Dittos! AMF! He split the GOP vote.
RIP.
Ross Perot, looking back to the debates, knew that NAFTA was a mistake. Prayers to his family...
“The first weaponized politician used to flip an election.”
Maybe the Teddy R and the Bull Moose party
Thanks for the first hand vignette!
People can make fun of him if they want, but if we had adopted Perot’s approach to immigration back in 1992, we would not be anywhere near as bad off as we are now, demographically speaking.
California might even still be politically competitive, had Perot become president in 1992.
RIP, Mr. Perot. Your EDS company was a middle finger to IBM, but you were correct in your assessment of the industry then, just as you were in your distrust of NAFTA.
His loyalty to his employees was absolute and he demanded the same of them. Read the book “On Wings of Eagles” to see how he got his employees out of Iran in 1979. Reads like a John Grisham novel, but this actually happened!
I’ve heard he didn’t like Bush 1 due to some perceived slight when Perot was involved in finding MIA’s from the Vietnam war.
“AMF, you little bastard! Thanks, heaps for Slick Willie!”
What difference was there between Clinton and Bush?
At Lear’s Perot correctly warned us about NAFTA
Rest in Peace. I was on the Perot bandwagon for a while. He was quite a man... EDS. But in the long run, he gave us Bill Clinton. Ugh.
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