In March, Ross Perot gave an extraordinary interview to Dan Balz of the Washington Post. “You’re not going to believe this,” Perot told Balz, but in 1993 “one of the two parties called up” and “wanted me to give a million dollars for dirty tricks” against the other party. The approach to Perot supposedly featured the unnamed dirty trickster laying out the tales his party was going to spread about the other party.
“Is that true?” Perot said he asked the trickster. “No,” he said the trickster replied, “but it’ll work.”
Seems a bit stilted, no? Like dialogue out of a TV movie? The leaders of both parties denied any such conversation ever took place, but Perot aired the charge again on the April 21 Meet the Press. Asked on live television by David Broder about his “strange, unsubstantiated” tale, Perot seemed defensive but insisted he had the name of at least one person who attended the meeting in question and asked for the dirty-tricks money. “That happened,” Perot said, “no ifs, ands, or buts.”
Pressed for the trickster’s name, the wily tycoon played coy, replying instead with a trademark non sequitur about professional wrestling. Sometime this fall, Perot said, “I will make [the name] clear.” In the meantime, he offered this tantalizing hint: “Haley Barbour was not directly involved, but in this case, I would see that he do a little bit of diligence up and down the chain of command, and I would say after about 15 minutes, you know, one of the two parties is going to say “Ooops!'”
Who could this trickster be? Let’s think for a minute. Since there is nobody above RNC chief Haley Barbour in the Republican party’s chain of command, that would leave a Barbour underling as the main suspect in Perot’s latest psychodrama. And since Perot rarely says anything, no matter how demented, except in the hope of political gain, the mystery man would probably be connected in some way to one of the two other men running for president this fall.
Which leaves one likely target of Perot’s ludicrous allegation: Scott Reed, now Bob Dole’s campaign manager and at one time, conveniently enough, Haley Barbour’s chief of staff. Imagine it’s September and Perot has announced a campaign for president. What better way to get some ink and throw the Dole campaign off-balance than to try to tar Scott Reed with this absurdity?
It all fits perfectly. Too perfectly, as Perot himself might say.
