Ross Perot, Texas billionaire Brash who presided over the presidency, dies at 89

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Ross Perot, the Texan giant who made a fortune in computer services, marveled the country with bold paramilitary missions in Vietnam and Iran, and presented to the presidency in 1992 and 1996 with populist speeches on the Norman Rockwell 's America Restoration, was off Tuesday at his home in Dallas. He was 89 years old.

The cause was leukemia, said a family spokesman, James Fuller.

They called him Texarkana's man, but he really came out of an era – the Great Depression, the Second World War and the exuberant years of the post-war – when boys had paper roads, people listening to radio and patriots who rolled up their sleeves for Uncle Sam and built innovative businesses and a powerful nation.

"Most people give up when they are about to succeed," said Mr. Perot. "They stopped on the one meter line. They give up at the last minute of the match to one foot of a winning touchdown. "

He was not a coward: an Eagle Scout, an Annapolis-based naval officer, one of the best sellers of IBM, founder of extremely successful data-processing companies, an advocate of education and the fight against drugs, a billionaire philanthropist. In 1969, he became a kind of folk hero with a delusional attempt to transport drugs and food to US prisoners of war in North Vietnam.

In 1979, he staged a commando raid that, according to him, would have released two of his employees and thousands of criminals and political prisoners from captivity in revolutionary Iran.

And in 1992, he became one of the most unlikely candidates to run for president. He had never held public office and seemed to have it all wrong, like a cartoon character who comes to life: a 5-foot-6, 144-pound elf cut by a 1950s crew; a twang from a nasal and squeaky country boy; and ears that stood out like Alfred E. Neuman on a Mad magazine cover. On the stiff, insolent, impetuous, often sentimental neck, he was entrusted to well-maintained epigrams: "If you see a snake, kill it. Do not name a snake committee. "

Under the banner "United We Stand America", he spent $ 65 million on a campaign featuring innovative infomercials for half an hour about himself and his ideas. They were popular, with ratings that sometimes exceeded those of sitcoms in prime time. Ignoring the negative articles in newspapers and magazines, he besieged talk shows on radio and television. The telephone standards illuminate with the calls of people wishing to volunteer.

Shortly after, millions of people responded to his calls to reduce deficits, red tape and government waste, rebuild ruined cities and restore his vision of America: the life of the small idealized city in welcoming portraits of basic patriotism, barber The main street draped with flags, a world away from corrupt Washington.

Although Mr. Perot has dealt with all jurisdictions since Lyndon B. Johnson, the federal government was one of his favorite targets. Washington, he said to his own people, "has become a city with sound clips, go-anywhere games, handlers, media stuntmen who post, create pictures, speak, shoot Roman candles. but never do anything. We need acts, no words, in this city. "

Improbably, he jumped into the polls as Republican President George Bush and Democrat Bill Clinton dragged one against the other. The polls showed that Perot's support came from all walks of life: Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals, mainly from the middle class. Citizen visits attracted him to the ballot in all 50 states. He was on the cover of Time magazine.

But at the height of his popularity, he suddenly pulled out of the race. A few months later, he returned to the country, claiming that his withdrawal was motivated by Republican "tricks" to sabotage his daughter's marriage with false compromising photographs.

He has surprisingly done well in three presidential debates, often making fun of Washington's stalemate. "This is not the fault of the Republicans, of course, nor that of the Democrats," he said in the second round. "Somewhere over there is an alien doing that to us, I guess."

On polling day, Mr Perot finished with 19% of the votes cast, nearly 20 million votes, against 38% for Mr Bush and 43% for Mr Clinton. It was the third strongest performance since Theodore Roosevelt's Bull Moose in 1912.

It has also led to claims by some Republicans, including the son of the president and the future president George W. Bush, that the candidacy of Mr. Perot had cost a second mandate to President Bush – an affirmation refuted by many political analysts, which evoked in particular polls at the exit of the urns showing that Mr. Perot's strength was assured did not come disproportionately from defecting Republicans.

In 1996, Mr. Perot was introduced again, this time on a new Reform Party bill, but he got away with it badly. At that time, the epigrams were pale and voters suspected that his commercial forces, his autocratic personality both risky and stubborn, might not serve a president forced by Congress and public opinion. And at that time, we knew more about Mr. Perot, who could be thin-skinned and average, who had subjected employees to moral codes and lie detector tests, who were attracted by theories conspiracy and hired private detectives to dispel his suspicions.

His candidacy was denied by a commission that refused to let him participate in the debate between President Clinton and Republican candidate Senator Bob Dole, on the grounds that he had no realistic chance of being elected. . He won only 8% of the vote. But, as he liked to say, "chess is like knees without skin: painful but superficial".

Henry Ray Perot was born June 27, 1930 to Gabriel and Lulu May Ray Perot, in the border town of Texarkana, in eastern Texas. His father was a cotton merchant and a horse dealer. The boy was doing well in local schools, but teachers said that his good grades were more related to perseverance than to higher intelligence.

He started working at age 7, selling door-to-door gardeners seeds and later, breaking horses (and his nose) for his father's dollar-a-head. At the age of 12, he began publishing The Texarkana Gazette on horseback in poor neighborhoods, soliciting subscriptions and building his itinerary from scratch to get extra commissions. He did so well that his boss tried to reduce his commissions, but he pulled back when the boy went to the publisher.

He changed his name to Henry Ross Perot in the honor of a brother, Gabriel Ross Perot Jr., who died in 1927, just a toddler. The family pronounced the surname PEE-roe, but at the age of 20, he also changed it's puh-roe, because, he says, he was tired of correcting people. He called himself Ross. Years later, the media added the initial "H" at the beginning of his name, but he never liked it.

He joined the Boy Scouts at age 12 and in just over a year he was an Eagle Scout, an extraordinary feat that has become part of the legend of his striver. After two years at Texarkana Junior College, he was appointed to the Naval Academy of the United States, where, despite academic mediocrity, he was elected class president and graduated in 1953.

During his last year, Mr. Perot met Margot Birmingham, a student at Goucher College in Baltimore. They married in 1956. She survives him, along with his son, Ross Jr .; four daughters, Nancy Perot, Suzanne McGee, Carolyn Rathjen and Katherine Reeves; 16 grandchildren; three step-grandchildren; and a sister, Bette Perot.

In the Navy, for four years, Lieutenant Navy Perot served on board a destroyer and an aircraft carrier, touring the world, but he saw no fighting. Military life has been irritated, especially the expectation of a promotion.

He gathered in 1957, joined I.B.M. in Dallas and became an outstanding computer salesman, filling his annual quota in three weeks. Agitated for new businesses, he urged the company to get into software and technical support, but his supervisors were indifferent. He resigned, and in 1962 he founded Electronic Data Systems to sell computer services: billing and wages, insurance claims, check clearing for banks, and possibly Medicare and Medicaid documents.

The company struggled for a few years, but by the mid-1960s it was on its way. He went public in 1968 and his stock price jumped from $ 16 to $ 162, making Mr. Perot one of the richest men in America. Many of his employees became millionaires, but all had to comply with his codes: conservative suits and short hair for men, no pants for women unless they froze. And no marital infidelities.

By the time he was successful, Mr. Perot tested his skills on Wall Street, but he was not a wizard. His business lost $ 450 million on paper one day in 1970, and then lost $ 65 million in a futile attempt to save DuPont Glore Forgan, a major brokerage firm in debt and paperwork.

His reputation as a popular patriot stems from two adventures. In 1969, after speaking for months about 1,400 American prisoners of war in North Vietnam, he chartered two airliners, filled them with 30 tons of food, medicine and gifts, and gave them a free ride. flew to Southeast Asia. Hanoi rejected the mission, but it was not a failure. The difficulties of the prisoners embarrassed Hanoi and led to better treatment for some.

In 1979, as an Islamic revolution swept through Iran, Mr. Perot organized a commando raid on a Tehran prison in order to release two employees held for ransom. A riot was orchestrated at the gates and 11,800 inmates escaped, including the two employees, in the chaos of a subsequent escape. The episode was narrated in Ken Follett's hit book "On the Wings of the Eagles" and in a 1986 NBC mini-series, but officials from the Tehran State Department at the 39, At times wondered if Perot's team had really been responsible for the release of the prisoners. , suggesting that Mr. Perot's account had been exaggerated.

Mr. Perot was recruited in 1979 by Governor William P. Clements of Texas to lead the drug war by the state. His work led to new laws that strengthened sentencing and law enforcement. In 1983, at the request of Governor Mark White, he led a redesign of the Texas public school system – raising school taxes, increasing teacher salaries, reducing the number of students per class, and preventing failing students from attending classes. school sports.

In 1986, Mr. Perot accepted a commitment of $ 700 million. redemption. Two years later, he founded Perot Systems and raided his former executive pool to become part of his new company. He was president for years and became president emeritus in 2004, when his son succeeded him. In 2009, the computer manufacturer Dell agreed to acquire Perot Systems for $ 3.9 billion.

Mr. Perot has donated millions of dollars to schools, hospitals and cultural groups. He has written books on politics and economics, including "United for the Defense of the Country" (1992), "Not for Sale at Any Price: How Can We Save America for Our Children" (1993) and "Preparing Our Country for the 21st Century" (1995). He has been the subject of several biographies, including Gerald Posner's "Citizen Perot: Life and Time" (1996).

The Reform Party of Mr. Perot faded afterwards and he cut his ties with him. In 2000, he promoted George W. Bush to the presidency and, in 2012, he supported Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor. He was publicly silent about the 2016 race, but in early 2000, when Mr. Trump was briefly exploring a presidential race on the Reform Party ticket, Mr. Perot had supported a party faction that strongly opposed the prospect of a Trump bid.

Meanwhile, his company, Perot Systems, thrived. Forbes ranked him as the 97th richest man in America in 2008, with $ 5 billion. However, its ranking had dropped in the years since: Forbes put it in 172nd place in 2018 and recently reported its net worth at $ 4.1 billion.

M. Perot remained proud of his singular life. "The eagles do not gather," he told Dallas visitors. "You have to find them one at a time." It was his favorite maxim, and he had it engraved on a plaque, sporting in his office his bust of Teddy Roosevelt, his George Stuart portrait of George Washington and his Norman collection The Rockwell Originals.

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