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POLITICS & COMMUNITY Road to Victory: Catching Perot at the Christian Coalition Convention by harry goldstein Don't miss the entry on Jack Kemp at the Christian Coalition Convention and Harry Goldstein's other columns on Campaign '96.

A long haired guy coming out of a car accosts me on the sidewalk and says "That's great. There's another long hair here. That makes three of us. You, me and Jesus." It's Friday the 13th. I just had a hellish time trying to park the car in what ended up being the 13th spot...there's some kind of numerological significance to that and it's undoubtedly Satanic. I'm on my way to the Washington Hilton where Pat Robertson and Ralph Reed's Christian Coalition is having its annual convention--this year called "The Road to Victory." There are hundreds of people milling around outside, weaving between charter buses and TV satellite trucks; many good white people, all of them looking, how shall I say? Purposeful. Clean cut. I'm trying to slip under their radar, but the earring gives me away. The long hair. The black suit on a hot September day. I get a few glances, but just as John Hinckley got through the crowd to pop Ronald Reagan at this same entrance, I run the gauntlet. Armed with the tape recorder I'm blathering into, plus a cheesy camera and laptop, I snag my credentials from the press room and head downstairs to where Ross Perot will be speaking in just a few minutes. I'm canvassing the International Ballroom. A young woman dressed in her Sunday best is plastering Pro-Life-Pro-Family posters on every one of the 3000 or so seats. They're undoubtedly intended for the demonstrations that will happen when Perot goes on. The best thing I can do now is to insert myself into the crowd, to be there, to feel the energy, the pulse of America! I'm not entirely sure if this is a good idea. I will be in the midsts of several thousand Christian Coalition members. How do I feel about that? Well...they're nice. Very, very nice. The press is kneeling in front of the podium. Sort of a strange juxtaposition. I'm sweating uncontrollably. I've got a pounding headache. There's a dearth of Perot campaign literature around here, which begs the question: why is he here? There seems to be, uh, I wouldn't exactly call it electricity in the air, but people are finding their seats. But no one's sat down next to me yet. They look at the seats around me. They move on. But that will change, because I'm in a prime area. I'm tired of feeling like on-the-field football commentator, so I'm going to shut the tape recorder off now and do a postgame show instead: Perot came to the podium to rousing applause and immediately set about trying to distinguish himself from Clinton--he doesn't care about polls, he writes his own speeches, he's a can-do business man who can implement systemic change and has proven this again and again. "I didn't take any polls to figure out what I believe. I believe you should have a president who can tell you what he or she thinks and what they believe instead of having teams of people take polls, put their finger to the wind, write the speech for them and have focus groups react to them and draft new speeches--can we agree on that?" That's Perot's favorite rhetorical exclamation. Can we agree on that? Well, the people there didn't agree with him on one major thing and he got a rude reception from a lot of them, many of whom were holding up the Pro-Life-Pro-Family posters for his entire speech. Others shouted him down, yelling "What about the babies?" "What about the children?" the guy next to me cried aloud. When I asked him if he was considering voting for Perot, he shook his head sadly. "Of course not," he said. "He's not pro-life." I pressed him on what he thought Perot had to gain by coming here to speak to an obviously hostile crowd. "I can't imagine, everyone here's probably going to vote for Dole." Perot delivered a ballsy speech, pounding home a message about children and the future, connecting the rising national debt and the grim future that awaits the next couple of generations who are stuck with our tab, while skillfully weaving in a fairly complex child development theory which says that 90% of a person's brain is developed by age 6, underscoring the need for active parenting. But no matter how much Perot talked about children and families, parents and values, the erosion of "our moral and ethical base," the debt and the budget, shady political finances and glitzy Hollywood style campaigns, the audience here knew Perot isn't pro-life and were at best amused by some of his rhetorical flourishes and at worst totally hostile, peppering the air with "Abortion." "Yeah, what about abortion?" "Talk straight on abortion." "What about the babies?" But the fact that they think Perot is responsible for Clinton being in the White House in the first place provided Perot with an opportunity to score points with anyone who was watching this speech on C-SPAN: "In this audience, I'm sure that there are many people who honestly believe that I elected Bill Clinton in 1992. (the crowd explodes in affirmation) That's why I brought it up, to get that kind of reaction. We've heard this again and again and again. (the crowd goes off again) I ask you, as honest, religious people, (Christian people! someone shouts) However you want it, honest Christian people, please go to the library and study the exit polls from the 1992 election. You will find that I drew equally from both candidates...."

"...And you'll find another interesting fact, as opposed to the propaganda. The pollsters asked the people as they were coming out of the polls, who would you have voted for had you voted your conscience? 40% said they would have voted for me, 31% for Clinton, 27% for Bush. Then they said, so why didn't you vote your conscience? And the voters responded, we were repeatedly told, don't waste your vote on Perot he can't win, and we wanted to vote for a winner. Well, you got what you voted for, a winner. Now I just ask you to look at the facts and not be manipulated at any time. I just use that as one example. If you don't like that one, I've got a lot of others, no new taxes. In 1996, people are still being manipulated by propaganda and negative ads that have nothing to do with the facts. The American people must demand...that the candidates deal with the issues."

That took guts and just for those few brief moments, when Perot allowed himself to be an object of derision and catharsis, my respect for the man increased. I still don't think that he has a snowball's chance in hell of being elected president. He didn't outline any specific programs, and you'll have to do some digging into his campaign literature to check them out. But Perot is good at focusing the voters' attention away from character issues and towards policy issues -- at least the ones he's interested in. Just for that, he deserves to be involved in the debates. And whether he is or not, he has no problem spending millions of his own dollars (and about $30 million of federal matching funds) to hold Clinton's and Dole's feet to the fire on the stump, and on his patented 30-minute infomercials. After the Perot speech, I had a protracted conversation with a delegate from NJ, who was hoping that Perot's statement that he wants to do something for this country meant that he was going to pull out of the presidential race and let Dole have his votes. The guy was very much concerned with welfare reform, "Move everyone off welfare--if the jobs aren't there, then move to another city." And: "I'm under the mistaken impression that the money I earn is mine, not the government's." He seemed to believe that if there are people starving in the streets, we'll give them food, each of us as individuals, but when I pressed him about whether there should be a social mechanism, i.e. government, to ensure that people don't go hungry, he balked. This is the contradiction at the heart of the Christian Coalition: they talk a lot about helping people out of moral and financial poverty, but their general lack of empathy overrides any kind of philanthropic thrust their ideas may have. Charity starts at home -- and stays there. The thing that struck me most about him was that he was very sincere, willing to engage. CCers know what they believe and they're committed to those beliefs. And I think that's what frightens people who aren't of the CC and don't believe what they believe in, they believe that CCers are fanatics. But they're not bloodthirsty fiends. CCers are frightened that their country is falling into total chaos. A lot of CCers are middle income and they don't understand what it takes to survive on anything less, in an urban area, as a single mother. They can't understand why people just don't go out and get a $20,000 a year job. They can't understand why everyone doesn't or can't live as they do. Harry Goldstein is a writer and editor living in Manhattan. His work has appeared in Utne Reader, American Book Review, Promethean, AltX, word.com, and other periodicals. © 1996 Harry Goldstein, All Rights Reserved