THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, October 29, 1996 TAG: 9610290322
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PAUL DELLINGER, LANDMARK NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: 105 lines
Ross Perot wants voters to consider the following:
If you were lying wounded on a battlefield, which of the three leading presidential candidates would you want to come and get you?
If you and your spouse were killed in a car crash, which candidate would you want to adopt your children?
Which would you want your daughter to marry?
The Reform Party candidate fired those questions Monday at more than 3,000 people packed into Virginia Tech's Burruss Hall Auditorium, and several thousand more crowded around a large-screen television outside. It was Perot's only Virginia campaign stop and the first time in eight years that a national political campaign stopped in the New River Valley.
Perot trails the major party candidates significantly in most polls but re-emerged as a major player in the race again last week when Republican Bob Dole's campaign urged the Texan to withdraw from the race and throw his support behind the GOP.
Perot refused, with relish.
Monday, the billionaire businessman and Naval Academy graduate, who was elected president of his class at Annapolis, stuck with his message that both Democrats and Republicans are running the country into the ground with overspending. Perot had signs attached on the curtain behind him showing the size of the national debt, tax rate, Social Security and Medicare costs, and one chart showing red bar graphs representing the debt rising like a staircase from 1975 to 2000.
Perot said 1992 exit polls showed that, if Americans had voted their consciences, he would have won. He urged his audience not to be swayed by ``cynical'' and ``manipulative'' advertising that a Perot vote is a wasted one.
He said he wants the votes of young people - the crowd was overwhelmingly made up of college students - because the main reason he is in the race is to head off a massive national debt with which they will be stuck if things continue as they are.
``We are making a mistake in our generation that no previous American generation has ever made,'' he told the crowd outside. ``We are spending your money. . . . You will be paying a terrible price for our stupidity. I won't let that happen. I want to educate the American public so our two political parties won't let that happen.''
During his auditorium speech, Perot said he could win this time if America's veterans and small-business community support him.
``Everybody west of the Mississippi River is needed to pay the interest on the national debt. And that line is moving east. . . . Our No. 1 growth industry in the United States is government.
``No other candidate gives you these facts, gives you these figures, talks to you bluntly like this. They all want to listen to Lawrence Welk music - `wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.' We can do it, if we don't get manipulated here in the last couple weeks.''
He criticized both major parties as being ``bought and paid for'' by special-interest campaign money and for pouring platitudes onto the problem of the national debt. Characterwise, however, he was harder on President Clinton than on Republican challenger Bob Dole.
``For heaven's sake, don't put anybody in office that you wouldn't hire as an employee in your business,'' Perot said. ``You have the president and his wife subjected to an ongoing criminal investigation. . . . We're going to have Watergate II - no ifs, ands or buts.''
Perot said the deficit problem can be fixed, but not if the president is distracted by criminal proceedings. ``We can't lose two years while we have Watergate II.''
With the Tech Corps of Cadets in prime reserved seats below him, Perot focused on an unusual stump-speech topic: war.
As president, Perot said, he would have a sign on his desk to make sure the nation fell into no more Vietnams: ``First, commit the nation, then commit the troops.'' If the nation were not committed, he said, he would not send the troops.
``I know what war is. Hell would freeze over before I would go to war to get a bump in the polls. . . . In World War II, FDR's sons flew missions. That's the way it ought to be.'' In the Persian Gulf War, only three members of Congress had sons there.
``War is a constant in history. Man is a warlike animal,'' Perot said. ``If we go to war, I would impose a daily sacrifice on every citizen.''
He would require every taxpayer to pay a ``war tax.'' If someone refused, ``I'd say, `Fine. Here's a weapon. Here's a uniform. Go over there and shoot.' ''
If he becomes president, no targets would be off-limits if they were endangering U.S. troops, he said, wherever they were located.
Perot didn't disappoint the Hokies gathered outside in front of Burruss Hall, Tech's main administration building. After his hourlong indoor speech, Perot moved outside and gave an abbreviated version with a hand-held microphone. He recalled rejoining his wife when he got out of the Navy, with everything they owned in the trunk of his car. And they were as happy then, he said, as now, with Perot a billionaire.
It is harder to decide on which worthy causes to spend his money than it was to make it, Perot said.
``When I was just 32 years old, I had a one-man organization with just $1,000 in the bank.'' Now he has 95,000 employees and a business generating annual revenue of $12 billion.
He said he wants to keep the nation as a place where people can still achieve that kind of success through hard work and skill - and that, he said, is another reason he is seeking the presidency. MEMO: Paul Dellinger is a staff writer for The Roanoke Times. ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
``We are spending your money. . . . You will be paying a terrible
price for our stupidity. I won't let that happen.''
- ROSS PEROT, to younger Americans, on the national debt
KEYWORDS: THIRD PARTY CANDIDATE PRESIDENTIAL RACE 1996 by CNB