Obama Should Be the 'Saner Ross Perot'

Become the permanent outsider and fix the deficit, Mr. President
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 29, 2010 8:51 AM CST
Obama Should Be the 'Saner Ross Perot'
Former U.S. presidential candidate H. Ross Perot holds up a document during his testimony before a California Senate committee July 11, 2002 in Sacramento, California.   (Getty Images)

Somewhere out there lurks a “saner, updated version of Ross Perot,” ready to swoop in and ride the public’s growing dissatisfaction with all things Washington. He’ll rail against the mounting deficits, and the Republicans and Democrats who let them mount. Well, Barack Obama, “you can either get run over by that saner Ross Perot,” writes David Brooks in the New York Times, “or you can be that saner Ross Perot.”

The State of the Union was a good start—Obama positioned himself as “the permanent outsider … the sole coolheaded man in Gomorrah.” Now it’s time to travel the country, charts and all, in a full-frontal assault on the special interests, partisan gridlock and everything else rotten on Capitol Hill. Because “if the setbacks of the last year haven’t radicalized you about the sickness of our current political system, Mr. President, I don’t know what will.”
(More Ross Perot stories.)

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