We’re All Living in the World Ross Perot Made
The Texas billionaire promised voters they could take their country back, showing candidates how to ride the waves of voter anger that still roil American politics.
His television platform was Larry King Live, not The Apprentice, and his persona was genial and folksy, not blustery and dark. But more than a quarter century ago, Ross Perot revealed a truth about the American electorate that Donald Trump would exploit: There is a big chunk of voters who feel disaffected, harmed by free trade, threatened by demographic change, and attracted to an eccentric outsider who promises to upend the status quo.
Like Trump, Perot was a billionaire narcissist whose convictions sometimes bordered on the conspiratorial, and like Trump, he was no fool. He proudly adopted Patsy Cline’s recording of “Crazy” as his campaign theme song in the waning hours of
