KINDER'S COMMENTARY: PEROT'S RISE AND BUSH'S FAILURE

So Ross Perot, in the manner of an ex-high school quarterback who craves attention suddenly seeing the spotlight focus elsewhere, says he'll form a new party. Well. Herewith, a prediction. Should such an undertaking actually be launched, Mr. Perot's Independence Party will prosper in inverse relation to the extent of his high-profile association with the enterprise. That is, the more such a party is associated in the public mind with the cranky, mercurial and childish Mr. Perot, the worse it will do in the great Hippodrome of American presidential politics.

The rise of Perot the political figure is a product of George Bush's failure. For me, one fact will always stand out as the most astonishing index of that failure. First, though, some historical context. Recall that in 1988 Mr. Bush was elected, improbably, to what American voters essentially understood to be Ronald Reagan's third term. I use the term improbably with good reason: No sitting vice president had been elected president -- though many had tried -- since Martin Van Buren took over from Andrew Jackson in 1836.

As the 1980s wore on a new term -- Reagan Democrats -- entered the political lexicon. Had Mr. Reagan's successor wanted to build on and consolidate this magnificent legacy, there could have been Bush Democrats, too. (After all, despite his privileged background, Mr. Bush was a western boots-wearing, country-music-listening Texas oil man and an avid hunter and fisherman.) But the first sighting of the species of Bush Democrat has yet to be reported. Why?

In one of the incredible acts of recent American public life, Mr. Bush promptly sued for divorce from his patron and climbed down from the impregnable fortress of Reaganism. The result, predicted in this space throughout the summer and fall of 1990, was the shattering of the center-right Reagan-Bush coalition that had brushed aside elite media opposition and transformed American politics, winning three presidential landslides in 1980, 1984 and 1988.

Mr. Bush's decision to repudiate the successful policies of his patron was signaled at his acceptance speech at the 1988 GOP convention in New Orleans, when he said he wanted a "kinder, gentler America." It is reported that Nancy Reagan, listening in the gallery,4 turned to a friend and said, "Kinder and gentler than who?" (She may be forgiven a little grammatical inexactitude.)

Key to the center-right coalition Ronald Reagan so brilliantly assembled during the 1980s was the group known as economic conservatives. These are the balanced-budget folks, the concerned-about-debt, fiscal responsibility crowd among whom Mr. Bush's "Read-my-lips, no-new-taxes" line resonated so effectively. When Bush betrayed this commitment with the catastrophic budget deal of 1990, an enormous void opened in the Reagan-Bush coalition.

Into this gaping breach, in February 1992, offering pithy one-liners and pledging angrily to "fix it," stepped the cranky Little General, Ross Perot. As the year rolled on and the fecklessness of the Bush White House was revealed for all to see, something else was revealed: like an artichoke's leaves being steadily peeled back, one after another of Mr. Perot's bizarre peccadilloes was laid before a frustrated and angry American electorate.

He was paranoid. He was cranky. He was dismissive of Washington politicians, but then, in this he spoke for a majority of the American people. How paranoid? He held a press conference to announce that he was pulling out of the race for president because the Bush White House had formed a conspiracy to disrupt his daughter's wedding! Years before, there were gun-toting CIA men on his lawn, and only a couple of alert watchdogs saved him from the sinister Bush conspiracy! There was proof: After all, the impressive Bush resume included a stint as CIA director, didn't it?

And, such was the electorate's frustration with the coalition government George Bush presided over that none of this nuttiness mattered. So, we arrive at the most incredible fact alluded to earlier: that after all this and more besides -- in short, after manifestly demonstrating his unfitness to hold any elected office, much less chief executive of the United States -- Ross Perot won 19 percent of the popular vote. And incumbent Bush was reduced to political cripple, with a lower popular vote percentage than a Depression-wracked Herbert Hoover won in 1932.

Today it is two years after Perot's humiliation at the hands of Vice President Al Gore in their televised debate over NAFTA. Frustrated at the attention showering down on Colin Powell, Perot, desperate to remain relevant, goes on Larry King to announce a third party. Far from kowtowing to him, the first leader to stand up to the petulant Mr. Perot will rise in the polls.

~Peter Kinder is the associate publisher of the Southeast Missourian and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.