It was especially easy, watching their gaseous, self-congratulatory fiesta in Dallas last weekend. A good part of the awfulness was Perot himself, ubiquitous and maniacal. He insisted on introducing every last shamelessly groveling pol, and then ushering them offstage with breathless encomiums, “What a great American” and “How ‘bout that” and “I’ve known [fill in the blank] a long time and he’s a man of great integrity.” And, of course, each successive man of great integrity combed his public record for stray policy shards that might appeal to the audience(while editing out all the other stuff) and then lardedon vast greasy tributes to the master of ceremonies. Only a few speakers dared deviate from the perceived prejudices of this sham convention. Poor Mack McLarty, the administration’s designated human sacrifice, did admit–in the midst of performing a triple-back-over-somersault-and-pander pirouette–that the president did, indeed, still believe in free trade.
None of which would be worthy of the death of a single tree, but for this: the Perot cult is a perverse distillate of a much broader, more profound and hopeful development–the growth of a radical middle, the 20 to 30 percent of the electorate at the center of the spectrum, disdainful of politics as it has come to be practiced in this country, distrustful of the two traditional parties and their special interests, ready to think about trying something new; They are the crucial swing vote in every major election. They are the reason the nation’s political elite is willing to trim Ross Perot’s cuticles. And the most important news about the radical middle is this: it has not been placated by the cathartic elections of 1992 and 1994. It is growing. “It has worked its way down the socioeconomic ladder, from the upper-middle to the working class, and grown angrier in the process,” says Frank Luntz, pollster to the fading Republican “revolution.” It is secular; it is, Luntz says, “anti-Washington, anti-elitist–and getting angry at us Republicans for moving too slowly.”
Actually, the anger is about style as much as speed. The Republicans have lost altitude with the radical middle because they are conducting business as usual. They aren’t attacking the Washington money culture; lobbyists are writing legislation. And so process questions–term limits, political lobbying reform, the line-item veto–have joined fiscal responsibility as the defining issues of the movement. Consider Fred Everett, a Marietta, Ga., businessman who claims to have introduced Newt Gingrich to the idea of a contract with his constituents. Everett had 16 items on his contract. “Newt took the idea, stripped the difficult stuff out and made it a more political document, throwing in things like tax cuts,” he says. “In essence, it’s a breach of contract.”
So Fred Everett, a registered Republican, is angry enough to . . . well, he’s not sure what he’s angry enough to do. There was, in Dallas, a fair amount of frustration with the two existing parties and a desire to explore other options. But there wasn’t much opportunity for that, what with all the fawning and stroking going on. “I don’t think many people here give a damn about any of these speakers,” said Scott Rasmussen, a leader of the term-limits movement. “They’d probably rather beat up on them.” (The most notable exception was Pat Buchanan, whose reactionary economic nationalism thrilled the crowd and only served to emphasize the Perot cult’s distance from true moderation.)
One wonders why Perot chose not to have the conference that many of his supporters were hoping for-a serious discussion, with independent political organizations like the Concord Coalition and disaffected centrists of both parties, about how to pursue the radical-moderate agenda of fiscal responsibility, political reform and social tolerance. On the day the conference opened, a CNN-USA Today poll had 62 percent of the public expressing a desire for a new political party. Given the groundswell, it was curious that the paid Perobots were quietly discouraging third-party talk: it would be too hard to start one now, they insisted (though not too hard for his nibs to launch another presidential ego-efflorescence). “Ross doesn’t want an actual party because he doesn’t want to be part of an actual democracy,” said one disgusted Dallas participant. “This is no grass-roots movement. He names the state coordinators. He runs the show–and most people are so grateful to him that they just put up with it.”
It is, perhaps, an appropriately oxymoronic conundrum for the radical middle. The greatest obstacle to success now may well be the man who set it all in motion.
