News Ross Perot, eccentric billionaire who made two independent runs for president, dies at 89
- Thread starter Keith1701
- Start date
There hasn't been an outstanding president in several decades and I doubt there ever will be again because if there was the NSA/CIA/WHATEVER would kill them.
But what does he have to do with TV?
The only thing worse than a politician in an elected office is a non-politician in an elected office, especially a high office. Perot was a nutter and a conspiracy theorist; he would have been a disastrous President.
He purchased two 30-minute blocks of television airtime during Prime Time to talk directly to the American public. Complete with pasteboard charts. He was certainly a unique character...
But I agree; this should probably be moved to TNZ, or at least Misc.
You mean like the conspiracy theories like Russia gave Trump the 2016 election by buying $4,500 worth of ads on Google or that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction?
I actually thought he had already died but I must’ve been thinking of the retired admiral who was his running mate & who died a few years back.
I'll give him this, he came the closeset to wrecking the crappy 2 party system we have in politics.. so I do wish he succeded, but owell.
RIP sir!
RIP sir!
I mean conspiracy theories like the CIA was trying to disrupt his daughter's wedding.
He very well could have fucked the two party system if he wasn't a clown who ran for president, dropped out and then ran again within a few months.
To me the reason there won't be an outstanding president is that anyone who would be outstanding would either be too smart to run for the office, or have too much integrity to effectively fundraise.
That sounds good in theory, but in reality, sovereign nations are not companies, and must perform functions that might not be profitable. Companies can look at parts of their business that aren't turning a profit, and decide to move out of that line of business. Nations can sometimes change how they perform some of their duties to be more productive and provide a better return, but there are still some necessary functions that nations simply cannot (or should not) drop. Like national defense -- lose a war and the nation may cease to exist. Natural disasters -- they are generally unpredictable, and very costly, but you need to care for the people and businesses affected, or you risk civil instability and further drain on public resources. Spaces for nature -- parks are not profitable, but the public needs places to go that are natural, especially in urban areas. If the government doesn't hold those in the public trust, no one else will.
And that's just the tip of the iceberg. There are many reasons that nations are not like businesses, and shouldn't be run like one. They can be run more efficiently, but the comparison is very inexact, and the two should not be confused.
I wish we could break the two party system and instead have something like Sweden where there’s 8 parties that form coalitions.
The democratic party would work better as a coalition and if the libertarians could vote for their own guys and then have a coalition with republicans they’d have more sway over their agenda.
The democratic party would work better as a coalition and if the libertarians could vote for their own guys and then have a coalition with republicans they’d have more sway over their agenda.
This might improve political parties' responsiveness to voters' needs, though I'm skeptical. There are definitely downsides. I don't want a situation like prevailed for decades in post-WW2 Italy, where 20-30 parties (or more) vied for power; governments were elected and then fell apart in less than a year, over and over again. Terrible instability. Then there are the puny parties that are still needed to form larger ruling coalitions; these fringe groups can then exert tremendous influence over a (possibly) more moderate government, threatening to bring down the government if they don't get their way on something. Examples of this are currently faced by the British Tory and Israeli Likud governments. So hardly a panacea...
I worked for Perot's company for awhile, EDS. I don't think you could be in IT in the 90's and not work for EDS at some point. They payed well, they trained well, they had a good reputation in a world full of fly-by-nights and dotcom cokeheads.
While he was still there it had a strange dress code. blue suit, white shirt, red tie, polished shoes. Everyone dressed like Perot, it was a uniform. Once he sold EDS it loosened up considerably, outside of Plano. I was on a contract with Toshiba. The Toshiba operation was pure So-Cal and could not stand the EDS dress code, since they were very relaxed. We were forced to dress down. I think I recall taking a class about how to dress casually. That was the culture.
I think Perot was a complicated person, as most are, and once people get into a historical perspective, very few still hold up well to current scrutany and he was far from perfect in his heyday. But at a time when returning soldiers were getting spat on and called baby killers, Perot saw talent he could mold into a burgeoning IT service sector. He was literally handing out business cards to his future EDS engineers as they walked through Arrivals, and it worked.
And when his employees were taken prisoner, he got them back, no matter what it took. You knew that when you worked for his company. Other employers could say "we got your back" but you knew they weren't going to send a private security force to save your ass if things got hairy. Perot would, because he did.
He was right about US not giving up its technological lead. This was not the ignorant ravings of an isolationist: he wanted trade but he wanted to make sure the country stayed competitive. I would say the threat of a second Perot technocrat shift in power at the very least caused people in power to at least partly pay attention, even if they did very little about it. If he had not dropped out of the race in 1992 and then reentered, if his VP candidate had not had his moment of identity crisis on stage in front of the entire country, I still believe he could have been president.
By 96 things were different, and later on I think he shifted further and further to the right. I don't think he could stomach Gov. Ventura being the defacto leader of the Reform Party so instead he tossed the keys to Pat Robertson. The subsequent implosion on what really could have been America's third party deserves its own discussion.
While he was still there it had a strange dress code. blue suit, white shirt, red tie, polished shoes. Everyone dressed like Perot, it was a uniform. Once he sold EDS it loosened up considerably, outside of Plano. I was on a contract with Toshiba. The Toshiba operation was pure So-Cal and could not stand the EDS dress code, since they were very relaxed. We were forced to dress down. I think I recall taking a class about how to dress casually. That was the culture.
I think Perot was a complicated person, as most are, and once people get into a historical perspective, very few still hold up well to current scrutany and he was far from perfect in his heyday. But at a time when returning soldiers were getting spat on and called baby killers, Perot saw talent he could mold into a burgeoning IT service sector. He was literally handing out business cards to his future EDS engineers as they walked through Arrivals, and it worked.
And when his employees were taken prisoner, he got them back, no matter what it took. You knew that when you worked for his company. Other employers could say "we got your back" but you knew they weren't going to send a private security force to save your ass if things got hairy. Perot would, because he did.
He was right about US not giving up its technological lead. This was not the ignorant ravings of an isolationist: he wanted trade but he wanted to make sure the country stayed competitive. I would say the threat of a second Perot technocrat shift in power at the very least caused people in power to at least partly pay attention, even if they did very little about it. If he had not dropped out of the race in 1992 and then reentered, if his VP candidate had not had his moment of identity crisis on stage in front of the entire country, I still believe he could have been president.
By 96 things were different, and later on I think he shifted further and further to the right. I don't think he could stomach Gov. Ventura being the defacto leader of the Reform Party so instead he tossed the keys to Pat Robertson. The subsequent implosion on what really could have been America's third party deserves its own discussion.
Thank you very much for your thoughtful reply. I'd forgotten about the rescue mission for his employees; that was indeed very admirable. As you say, he was a complicated person. I don't know how his companies were run in terms of management, boards, and shareholders, but I get the impression that he very much liked being in control, and having things run the way he thought they should. A US President has a lot of authority, but he/she doesn't have the final say in a great many areas, due to the wise separation of powers delineated in the Constitution. I think Perot as President would have been thwarted (rightly or wrongly) on a lot of things he might have tried. From his public appearances and interviews, I don't think he would have taken that very well. Whether it was an accurate picture, he did not always come across well on TV. Would he have been a better choice than the other two candidates (who had flaws of their own)? I tend not to think so, but we'll never know.
BTW, I had a cousin who worked for EDS in Plano during the 90s, but I'm not sure what division he was in. He seemed to have enjoyed his time there.
BTW, I had a cousin who worked for EDS in Plano during the 90s, but I'm not sure what division he was in. He seemed to have enjoyed his time there.
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