U.S. POLITICS: SELL HOKUM TO THE VOTERS

Does an independent have a snowball's chance in hell of being elected president? No. Why does someone run in spite of history's teaching? He's a snowball.

Theodore Roosevelt was the most successful independent back in 1912. He was a national figure of heroic proportions. He had picked the corpulent William Howard Taft as his successor and found he had made a big mistake. He first tried to eliminate Taft within the party at the Republican convention. Failing that, he decided to sink him by running as an independent "Progressive" or "Bull Moose" it was called.

Among other things, Roosevelt left the nation two final legacies: President Woodrow Wilson and the liberal or progressive wing of the Republican Party, which later produced Wendell Wilkie, Thomas Dewey, Dwight Eisenhower and, in days of yore, a whole bunch of liberal Republican senators like Jack Javits, Clifford Case, Mac Mathias and John Sherman Cooper. These senators exercised enormous power in the U.S. Senate, often as part of a minority within the minority party.

In 1980, John Anderson was the last Republican progressive to seek the presidency perhaps he was the last progressive Republican. He would, he thought, rescue the Republican Party from the evil clutches of Ronald Reagan and, failing that, he would resort to an independent candidacy.

Although Anderson wanted to bring down Ronald Reagan, the thrust of his tell-it-like-it-is-Tsongasesque appeal drew liberal-leaning independents and disaffected Democrats away from hapless Jimmy Carter. Anderson started with a bang 25 percent in the polls as high as Ross Perot in this year's current calculations. He campaigned himself down to 6.7 percent.

There are enormous differences between the Anderson campaign of 1980 and the upcoming Perot campaign of 1992. Anderson's campaign was planned on the run out of his and David Garth's hat. Garth was the tyrannical media wizard from New York City whose talents didn't much fit west of the Hudson River. Presumably, the Perot campaign will have some focus and planning and no Garth.

Anderson' campaign was broke, often living on pass-the-hat donations at Anderson appearances. Perot will be awash in money.

The American voters were, to be sure, disenchanted in 1980 with hostages in Iran, run-away inflation, etc. But the American voters in 1992 appear to have passed through the zone of benign disaffection into near psychological rebellion. Distrusts and hatred of politics and politicians pervade the land. Anderson played to a fairly narrow audience of the politically disturbed; Perot plays to a much wider audience of the politically disgusted.

Perot will exceed John Anderson's numbers. He's no Theodore Roosevelt, but he is a shrewd country cookie. David Frost, once a penetrating TV interrogator, stumbled around interviewing Perot for an hour on national television and Perot made mincemeat of him. Old Ross might make Sam Donaldson's toupee spin.

There's a lot of hokum in American politics. The question is: Is it convincing hokum? Perot seems to be ensconced with a bucket of superficially convincing hokum. It will sell to lots of disgusted voters.