THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, August 26, 1996 TAG: 9608260055
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A8 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Column
SOURCE: Guy Friddell
DATELINE: CHICAGO LENGTH: 59 lines
To one side of the street-wide car door in Chicago's O'Hare Airport, a young woman with a sweet smile was singing to welcome delegates to the 1996 Democratic convention.
Hearing Kelly Mesich with the Whiskey Bent combo, travelers dropped their luggage and listened to her finish ``Crazy,'' a song popularized by Patsy Cline. ``Yes, she's the best,'' Mesich told me.
``My thoughts turn to Ross Perot,'' I said.
Perot dared to make a theme song of ``Crazy,'' even though many observers deemed him nuts.
(Perot biographer Gerald Posner says he's not crazy; Perot's fables, which get out of hand in wildly exaggerated presentations, usually have ``a germ of truth.'')
Virginia Democrats, arriving to nominate Bill Clinton, seemed serene believing that Perot's candidacy will draw votes from Bob Dole. I think they're nuts.
In Perot's acceptance of the Reform Party's nomination and in his talk to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, he blasted both parties as if he were firing a double-barreled shotgun to get one and then the other.
If anything, Clinton as a sitting president is a fatter target that draws more fire.
It is absurd, Perot said, for leaders of the two parties to argue who is more to blame for the deficit. ``They were both there when it happened. . . . All they're going to do is lean forward with tears in their eyes in 1996 and say `I feel your pain and I'm going to protect Social Security as we know it.' ''
Clinton caught more of the sting in that quip. Perot wants every vote possible from both parties.
Neither his zest nor his gift for finding Cracker Jack prize praises has diminished.
Receiving the Reform Party's nomination, the little big-eared peanut strutted as a peacock.
The VFW greeted him with polite applause, but in half an hour Perot beguiled them into an ovation.
Denouncing a federal defense policy approving the purchase of defense equipment from abroad, Perot asked: ``Did either of the other two candidates bring that little skunk up and hold it by the tail?''
He is fox-cunning about human nature. He wasn't asking for their vote - ``that would be improper,'' he said. He was only asking that they get the facts and make up their minds.
What kind of a civics lesson is that self-righteous little aside? To ask for votes is basic to democracy. Thus Perot, a naval vet, drove home his sidewinding plea for their votes: ``Let's strap in one more time. You guys get organized and decide who's going to lead this country into the 21st century. I think you'll make the right decision.''
Perot is out to get 25 percent of the vote to improve his showing of 19 percent in 1992. In the three-way melee, Democrats may be just as vulnerable as Republicans.
KEYWORDS: DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL CONVENTION 1996 by CNB