By Irwin Silber
The most intriguing question about Perot's independent bid for the presidency remains: what prompted it?
Personal vanity and private wealth surely played a role, but they hardly explain the Perot phenomenon. Nor do the hyperbolic characterisations of Perot as a man on horseback directing an incipient fascist takeover. Both the personal and apocalyptic explanations miss the real significance of Perot's sally into the minefields of presidential politics.
The answer is instead one that we on the left should ponder carefully. Fundamentally, the Perot candidacy was fuelled by a growing anxiety in significant sectors of the business community and large numbers of recession-hit professionals and upper-level workers with the do-nothing response of the Bush administration to the deteriorating US economy.
Similar concerns and constituencies provided the tinder for Paul Tsongas' momentary flurry in the Democratic primaries in the spring. (Was it merely coincidence that Perot did not announce his candidacy until it became clear that Tsongas wasn't going to win the Democratic nomination?)
The concern of Perot, Tsongas and their supporters is mainly concentrated in the following:
First, a survey of 1300 business leaders and economists found "a profound sense of disappointment and even outrage at Washington's poor stewardship of the economy". In particular, these executives felt that "government had abandoned its traditional economic responsibilities, including running sound fiscal and monetary policies, educating tomorrow's work force and building modern public infrastructure".
To be sure, dissatisfaction with the laissez-faire economics of the Reagan and Bush administrations is hardly universal in the ranks of capital. But a surprisingly large swath of entrepreneurs, bankers, industrialists and corporate-employed economists feel that those policies — most glaringly punctuated perhaps by the relaxing of banking regulations that led to the $500 billion savings banks debacle — have brought the US economy to the brink of disaster.
Second is the skyrocketing federal debt, which under Reagan and Bush went from $1.5 trillion in 1980 to $4.5 trillion in 1992 with no end in sight to such increases. As a result, the portion
of government income that goes for interest payments has risen from 9% in 1981 to 30% this year. But, as Perot points out, "Interest doesn't buy a thing ... [and] no nation can afford to pay $214 billion a year for nothing".
There were few complaints from the business community during the 1980s, however. As Donald Barlett and James Steele point out in America: What Went Wrong?, these "interest payments represent the largest transfer of wealth in this century — with the money going from middle-class job holders to the investors who own the debt".
Much of this debt was the consequence of Reagan's huge arms build-up. But tax cuts for the rich and huge tax breaks for corporations aggravated the problem and sent the government scurrying to foreign capital.
Third, the Perot phenomenon reflects widespread dismay among normally Republican backers that their party has become hostage to a phalanx of right-wing zealots committed to a social agenda that flies in the face of fundamental lifestyle shifts that have already become central to contemporary culture. By and large, Perot's constituency seems to be pro-business, pro-choice and somewhat troubled by racial injustice.
Finally, Perot launched an independent candidacy rather than backing a "moderate" Democrat like Tsongas because neither he nor his supporters believe that the Democratic Party can muster the political will for what they see as the key to getting the economy back on track: major tax increases, drastic reductions in entitlement and social programs and measures that would enable employers to step up worker productivity.
But while Perot's hard-nosed approach to the country's economic woes helps explain his appeal, it also explains its limitations. How does one get elected on a platform that calls for major government intervention in the economy financed by cutting the military budget, sizeable tax increases (and not just on the rich) and painful curbs on social security, Medicare and welfare?
Perot's "Plan for the Twenty-First Century", unveiled in July, is a virtual manifesto for a lean, efficient hands-on state monopoly capitalism that would resolve social and class conflict by restoring the system's economic vitality. Thus Perot advocates a program that would go even further than Japan's celebrated Ministry of International Trade and Industry in charting a course and providing support for private industry. At the top of his list is major government investment in education, technological development and upgrading of the country's transportation and communications infrastructure.
But Perot's key theme is his pledge to balance the federal budget in five years. While Perot's plan to do this has a slight populist tinge — "Stop subsidising the rich" — the greatest pain naturally would be felt by those whose principal resource is their labour power. The wealthy will be inconvenienced by and howl at proposals to limit tax deductions on home mortgages of $250,000 or more, or to eliminate the income cap (now $130,000) on social security taxes. But increasing Medicare payments, raising petrol taxes 50 cents a gallon and reducing cost-of-living increases for federal pensioners by one-third inevitably would have their greatest impact on the working class.
Perot's particular plan for cutting costs and raising money is significant not because it will necessarily be implemented by him or anyone else, but because it helps identify the terrain on which many of the political struggles of the next decade will be fought. For the fact is that the Texas billionaire is on to something. Short of a drastic turn to the left in national politics, the next several presidents will be forced to confront the challenge that Perot has posed. The questions then will be: Who will pay — and how much? Which federal programs will be cut — and how much?
Among the political challenges facing the rest of us is how to make sure we influence the answers.
[Irwin Silber is an editor of CrossRoads magazine.]