Historical Background: Presidential debates are a product of the television era. In 1960, Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy met in the first general election presidential debate, which was viewed by about 70 million people.
Ross Perot is jumping back into the political fray, this time with a stern warning that the country better start paying attention to the national debt.
Political junkies are excited and electrified over a potential independent presidential bid by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and for good reason.
Anyone who's ever been in the spotlight knows fame is a fickle friend. Back in 2005 we tracked down 11 of these once household names - most of whom haven't spoken to the press in years - to find out what they've been up to.
A group that includes veterans of the Ford and Carter administrations is counting on public dissatisfaction with Washington partisanship to fuel an Internet campaign for a bipartisan "unity ticket" in the 2008 presidential election.
About 50,000 newly released pages of documents from the Nixon administration primarily address the war in Vietnam but also deal with topics including the Supreme Court nomination of William Rehnquist, the pardon of union leader Jimmy Hoffa and efforts by Ross Perot to help prisoners in Vietnam.
Retired Vice Adm. James Stockdale, a former prisoner of war and Ross Perot's running mate for president in 1992, died Tuesday at 81, the Navy announced.
Bill Agee, 67, and Mary Cunningham Agee, 53
WASHINGTON (Creators Syndicate) -- Forget all the snide knocks at the eccentric Texas billionaire, Ross Perot proved conclusively in his 1992 independent run for the presidency that even a losing candidate, with a strong message, can profoundly change national policy.
August was a good month for President Bush. He took a lead in both national and key state polls -- including even in Democratic-leaning Iowa. But expect John Kerry to enjoy a little September resurgence.
Historical Background: Presidential debates are a product of the television era. In 1960, Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy met in the first general election presidential debate, which was viewed by about 70 million people.
Ross Perot is jumping back into the political fray, this time with a stern warning that the country better start paying attention to the national debt.
Political junkies are excited and electrified over a potential independent presidential bid by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and for good reason.
Anyone who's ever been in the spotlight knows fame is a fickle friend. Back in 2005 we tracked down 11 of these once household names - most of whom haven't spoken to the press in years - to find out what they've been up to.
A group that includes veterans of the Ford and Carter administrations is counting on public dissatisfaction with Washington partisanship to fuel an Internet campaign for a bipartisan "unity ticket" in the 2008 presidential election.
About 50,000 newly released pages of documents from the Nixon administration primarily address the war in Vietnam but also deal with topics including the Supreme Court nomination of William Rehnquist, the pardon of union leader Jimmy Hoffa and efforts by Ross Perot to help prisoners in Vietnam.
Retired Vice Adm. James Stockdale, a former prisoner of war and Ross Perot's running mate for president in 1992, died Tuesday at 81, the Navy announced.
Bill Agee, 67, and Mary Cunningham Agee, 53
WASHINGTON (Creators Syndicate) -- Forget all the snide knocks at the eccentric Texas billionaire, Ross Perot proved conclusively in his 1992 independent run for the presidency that even a losing candidate, with a strong message, can profoundly change national policy.
August was a good month for President Bush. He took a lead in both national and key state polls -- including even in Democratic-leaning Iowa. But expect John Kerry to enjoy a little September resurgence.
It is just after 7 a.m. on a Tuesday in the middle of August. Retired high school science teacher Harold McGuire is sitting at a long table surrounded by men he has known for decades. His shirt poc...
H. Ross Perot Jr., namesake of the Texas billionaire and CEO of Perot Systems, a FORTUNE 1,000 data-services company, has always been an aviation nut. Back in 1982, when Ross Jr. (as he's known ar...
With a Bush running for re-election, you might be wondering whatever happened to Ross Perot. The Texas businessman turned presidential candidate is busy leading a turnaround at Perot Systems (PER),...
You look at your federal income tax return and you ponder that box marked "Presidential Election Campaign."
Normally we'd give a wine expert $100 and ask him to tell us about what he buys, but since Joshua Wesson owns the store, it seemed beside the point (and it saved us a Benjamin). For the record, Wes...
Two years ago Perot Systems, which cobbles together computer systems for large companies, recruited a team from bankrupt e-commerce forerunner Nets Inc. Now Perot Systems (which just went public) i...
It's got to be one of the weirdest alliances in recent Washington history: Phyllis Schlafly and a few other conservative activists united with Ross Perot, 27 Nobel prize winners, and an army of inv...
In October 1996, with the presidential election days away, President Clinton won a small victory: He got Mexico to raise the price it charges Americans for tomatoes. In November 1997, Clinton suffe...
As philanthropist Ross Perot might say, here's the problem: Making money is fun, sexy--a great outlet for aggression. But giving it away? What's the challenge there? Any idiot with an Ivy League de...
With Bob Dole's apparent inability to string words into sentences and sentences into paragraphs, and with President Clinton's contrasting and unstoppable fluency in the verbal arts, the presidentia...
Ross Perot likes to refer to his running mate as "Dr. Pat Choate," and describes him thusly: "In the 1980s, Pat was vice president, public policy, at TRW, a major U.S. company...Business Week has c...
"I started my career with EDS in 1983. I remember in the interview being told all the things I could not do, or I would be fired. I took my personal life underground. We were driven to succeed, a d...
If the 1996 Presidential race has you scratching your head, don't worry: That's a perfectly reasonable reaction. After all, on the Republican side, former Senator Bob Dole, who spent the past decad...
Could it be that the American electorate just loves to roll over for a big guy who's smooth on TV and can talk like a Republican? President Clinton, who's taken to sounding quite Reaganesque at tim...
Here's a vernal ritual you know well: The major parties finish tidying up their presidential nominations and start preparing for the general election. Down in a Texas office building, stirrings of ...
AS THE COUNTRY slouches toward mid-term elections on November 8, U.S. voters remain mired in the same bitter funk that blew away so many incumbents in 1992. If anything, their mood is even surlier,...
Stories such as January's "Slash Your Taxes by 30% or More" are very disturbing. You tell us about a family with a $100,000 yearly income paying zero taxes for the past six years. That may be brill...
Now, here's the deal. Ross Perot may have suffered a setback in his effort to block the North American Free Trade Agreement, but he's still ahead of the game when it comes to taxes. -Perot's 1993 t...
Expect 1994 to be a year of pragmatism. Coffee is back, clear colas out, and hemlines are where you want them to be. Says Barbara Feigin, an executive VP at Grey Advertising: ''Consumers have seize...
SHARPER IMAGE Who's Eastman Kodak focusing on to be its next CEO? The board member in charge of the search committee, Coca-Cola's head, Roberto Goizueta, says that the new chief should know marketi...
HERE IS the service conundrum: In the cutthroat, cost-conscious, globally competitive 1990s, how do you get customers to love you? Visit a Home Depot store, a retail Disneyland for residential fixe...
Health maintenance organizations might seem like big winners if Hillary Rodham Clinton's health care program emphasizes so-called managed competition. But murmurs from Washington of federal price c...
-- ALICE M. RIVLIN, 61, deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget, on Ross Perot: ''Perot is not happy. He says ((Clinton's plan)) is not enough, and that he would have gone further --...
The year is winding down as we tap in these bytes, so it must be time for Keeping Up's traditional (now in its second year) list of the ten ''most notorious'' businesspersons of the annum. As in th...
Election years are best remembered for their presidential candidates rather than for their products, but in 1992 the line between the two blurred. Hence the appearance of Ross Perot on this year's ...
NO, VIRGINIA, there will not be a ''December surprise'' in the U.S. banking business. Despite the dire warnings of Ross Perot, 100 banks will not be shuttered and a bill for $100 billion will not b...
There's no disputing the final count. Bill Clinton won 43% of the popular vote and 370 electoral votes, while George Bush took 38% of the vote and 168 electoral ballots. Question is, does that marg...
YOU SAY you've heard enough about the federal budget deficit? You know it will come to roughly $314 billion in fiscal 1992? You know the national debt grew from nearly $1 trillion ten years ago to ...
-- MICHAEL EISNER, 50, CEO of Walt Disney, on visitors to the Euro Disney theme park outside Paris: ''We've already had a million Germans and a million British guests, and to have those numbers in ...
Though George Bush got only a momentary bounce in opinion polls after the ! Republican convention, GOP strategists hoped to narrow Bill Clinton's lead to single digits by Labor Day, and from there ...
THE BILLIONAIRES/COVER STORIES 86 THE BILLIONAIRES It's the frugal 1990s, and the world's 233 wealthiest individuals and families seem to be cooling the spending. One reason conspicuous consumption...
BROTHER, can you spare a billion? Since the time of the Medici, great philanthropists have answered ''Sure,'' and spared it or its equivalent. Not content merely to pile up assets, they have sought...
''Ross Perot campaign memorabilia could double in value over the next year or so. But then it will plummet as fast as it rose because everybody will forget about Perot.'' -- Bob Rau, host of the PB...
POLITICALLY, 1992 has been the year of the roller coaster. Just last summer, flush from his Gulf war victory, George Bush looked like a shoo-in for reelection. Since then, recession and un-leadersh...
Like Michael Dukakis in 1988, Bill Clinton surely got a hearty bounce from his surprisingly unacrimonious New York City convention. But no one in the Clinton camp is taking his lead in the polls fo...
So you think you have the measure of Ross Perot: tough, self-made billionaire, authoritarian populist and -- until mid-July's about-face -- presidential wannabe. You only know half of it. The part ...
Keeping the banking system financially secure is among the most critical jobs facing the next President. Already, the federal savings and loan bailout is expected to stick taxpayers with a bill for...
Dear Mr. Statistics: As a chap who took the liberal arts course and still keeps forgetting what a standard deviation is, I was recently unnerved to read in the Journal of Educational Psychology (Vo...
If the Texas billionaire wins the White House, free trade could well be out and gung-ho mercantilism in. Warns the Japanese daily Yomiuri Shimbun: ''Perot's tough stance would mean the party is ove...
The Bush Administration is pressing ahead with a politically risky strategy to reach a free-trade deal with Mexico at a time when lost U.S. jobs are uppermost in the voters' minds. The White House ...
THE SOCIETY/COVER STORY 42 THE UPBEAT GENERATION Surprise! A FORTUNE poll says working Americans in their 20s are optimistic about their careers and financial prospects, and expect to live just as ...
One of the critical issues of the coming decade will surely be the large and growing share of federal spending earmarked for the elderly. Overall, some 55% of federal social spending -- or roughly ...
Money alone won't buy the Texas billionaire the presidency. ''If Ross Perot's message were the same as George Bush's,'' says GOP political analyst Kevin Phillips, ''his money would hang him.'' But ...
SHAKEN BY RECESSION, scandal, and racial riots, Americans are clamoring for change. So guess who is pitching himself as a change maker? None other than George Bush, who sold himself as the continui...
On the face of it, you'd be silly not to be buying stocks nowadays. Corporate profits are swelling, and the economy is starting to boogie. The easy alternatives to equities, like bank CDs, offer a ...
TO HENRY ROSS PEROT's growing band of supporters, there's no doubt about it: His stellar business skills are convincing proof that he ought to be President. As campaign volunteer Nell Dee ''Bunny''...
POLITICS & POLICY/COVER STORIES 62 WHAT BUSINESS THINKS OF PEROT As President? Not much, was the short answer to Fortune's poll of top CEOs. Although they'd like to see a businessman in the Oval Of...
THEY LOVE him down at the Lions club and the bowling alley, but in the skyscrapers and on the golf courses where the CEOs of America's largest corporations work and play, the idea that Ross Perot m...
As news cameras zoom in on the United Nations' Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro this month, the U.S. presidential candidates' views on protecting the planet will surely get more scrutiny. In general,...
Ross Perot, 61, interrupted his noncampaign for the White House to stop by Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania (pop. 50,000), to dedicate a new business school named for his buddy William McGowan, 64, chair...
COMPETITION/COVER STORIES 46 WHY JAPAN WILL EMERGE STRONGER You may think it is down for the count, but the blows to the Japanese economy are purging dangerous excesses: When the country comes out ...
Across the land, up hill and down dale, the people are coming out for industrial policy. As previously and derisively noted in this space, Paul Tsongas is for it. Ross Perot seems to be for it. (He...
-- PHIL GRAMM, 49, U.S. Senator (R-Texas) and a Bush supporter, on Ross Perot's noncampaign for the White House: ''Anybody with $2.1 billion has to be taken seriously.''
Never give up a good grudge is the present combatant's guiding principle, instantly invoked upon reading the news from St. Petersburg a while back. The news was grim. It told of ominous leaks of ra...
In 1988, Ross Perot told FORTUNE how he would turn around GM, the company that made him even richer by buying his EDS computer services outfit in 1984 and where he served briefly and unhappily as a...
They're exotic. Some, neurotic. They're billionaire children -- saplings bent by a green money wind. Until now they seemed too rare to be of much interest to the rest of us. When the world has thou...
Despite the sporty examples shown below, not every CEO likes automotive dash. Sure, some drive convertibles. Intel's Andrew Grove has a 1988 Chevy Cavalier, and Jack Byrne of Fireman's Fund a 1983 ...
Ross Perot first went to work for IBM in 1957 -- but the job lasted only five years. The young salesman from Texas did well -- and once even met his annual quota by January. But he ruffled feathers...
EXECUTIVE LIFE/Cover Story 38 IS YOUR CAREER ON TRACK? Forget the old rules. Promotions are coming more slowly. Lateral moves are in. (You can chalk it up to that clomping herd of baby-boomers agai...
TRAVELERS' ADVISORY: In just a few years, things could get very, very ugly. Along with mobs of weary souls, you will be stranded for hours at U.S. terminals whenever the weather turns bad. Even und...
When I go to Asia or Europe, I feel like I'm looking at tomorrow. When I go to many U.S. cities, I see decay and neglect and I feel like I'm looking at yesterday. You compare the work force in Euro...
ROSS PEROT, 59, Texas billionaire, on how to fight the drug epidemic: ''Simply declare civil war and the drug dealer is the enemy. There ain't no bail. You go straight to POW camp.''
ARE YOU sure you want a billion? Before you answer, consider H. Ross Perot. He has nearly three of them. He also has an original of the Magna Carta, some Remington and Charlie Russell bronzes, and ...
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) Printer, publisher, writer
FROM THE power of their performance in the past, from the penetration of their analysis of the present, comes the driving compulsion of their diagnosis for the future. These remarkable people, 120 ...
WEARY bank regulators and emissaries of Ronald O. Perelman deliberated late into the night last December 27 in the offices of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Dallas. Finally, in a room bereft of Chri...
TEXANS these past few years have been feeling lower than a snake's belly in a wagon rut, but slowly they're returning to form. That is to say, they're bragging again. While taxpayers in the rest of...
Developing a huge condominium complex on New York Harbor is the most mundane thing Paul Bucha has ever done. But at 45, Bucha can make do with a few less thrills. A Vietnam war hero and later chief...
THERE MUST be days when old-timers at Electronic Data Systems long for the relative peace of Vietnam's jungles, the only place many had served before Ross Perot began recruiting them for his comput...
''What you are seeing now is the development of enormous power without many effective limits.'' -- David Boies, lead attorney for Texaco, talking about pension funds.
At last, an extremist is going to deal with the U.S. Postal Service. To be sure, the bomb thrower in question is only a consulting firm. But the firm being retained to study the Postalites is newly...
Can you muzzle an ex-manager? Not in Washington, if Larry Speakes's Speaking Out and Donald T. Regan's For the Record: From Wall Street to Washington (see Books & Ideas) are any proof. Corporations...
CAN STEVE JOBS dazzle the world again with a new computer? Come summertime, we may know the answer. Since 1985 the man who started Apple Computer and quit in a huff nine years later has been cloist...
MANAGING /Cover Story
RARELY have the accomplishments of a select group of self-made men -- and of a self-made woman -- been more diverse. Estee Lauder built a great cosmetics company, unabashedly appealing to the sin o...
When Chairman Roger Smith learned of Ross Perot's indictment of GM management, he asked for an opportunity to reply. Highlights of the rebuttal he presented in a 1 1/2-hour phone interview with wri...
MANAGING /Cover Stories
The show was intended to herald a new start. As its miserable sales figures for 1987 came out, General Motors staged a multimillion-dollar extravaganza at New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel to displa...
ROSS PEROT is giving away his $2.5-billion fortune. He says it is all going to charity, ''the best and highest use.'' Over the past two decades he has parted with more than $100 million, and in the...
Even at age 31, skinny, befreckled Bill Gates looks like a bookish high- schooler doomed to be bullied all over the playground. But no one is kicking sand in the face of Microsoft's chairman these ...
Apple Computer co-founder Steve Jobs, who was pushed out at the ripe age of 30, reflects on what he has learned about himself and his management that he can apply to his new computer company, NeXT ...
IT WAS ALL THERE but the amens and the hallelujahs. Just days after H. Ross Perot resigned from the General Motors board, which had paid him $750 million for his GM shares, he was standing before a...
Under pressure from critics, including director Ross Perot, General Motors displayed new urgency to cut costs and hang on to market share (FORTUNE, November 10). Before Thanksgiving a report surfac...
WARREN BUFFETT, 56, the chairman and guiding genius of Berkshire Hathaway, the phenomenally successful holding company, is worth at least $1.5 billion. But don't bother being jealous of his three c...
Are the rich getting richer, or is somebody getting rich who did not used to be? That question is not addressed in a new study on wealth by the Democratic staff of Congress's Joint Economic Committ...
In trying to push GM into the 21st century, is Roger B. Smith neglecting what remains of this one? Since he took over as chairman in 1981, Smith, 61, has wrought prodigious changes designed to tran...
IT WAS ALL THERE but the amens and the hallelujahs. Just days after H. Ross Perot resigned from the General Motors board, which had paid him $750 million for his GM shares, he was standing before a...
THE PARTY DAYS that oil brought to Texas are over -- probably for good, most Texans admit -- and the hangover in the state's economy is taking its sweet time to end. Though the state is trying to s...
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