EDITOR’S page

This month, Perot and Dallas will share the national spotlight as Perot brings in a raft of leading politicians and presidential candidates-Bob Dole, Phil Gramm, et al.-for a United We Stand issues forum/town hall meeting. But long before his tumultuous foray into presidential politics three years ago,the Dallas billionaire,as he is always dubbed by the national media, helped create and cement the city’s image as a mythical realm of bold, eccentric, fabulously wealthy men-the kind of larger-than-life figures (H.L. Hunt, Clint Murchison) who peopled books like The SuperTexans and those awestruck special “Texas” issues of Life and Look in the ’60s.

That colorful if not wholly accurate stereotype was but one of Perot’s booster rockets in the 1992 presidential campaign. Even more vital in bringing him 19 percent of the vote was his rise, through persistence and hard work, from humble origins to unimaginable riches. Indeed, Perot’s money fueled hopes that politics could not corrupt him. A business legend, independently wealthy for most of his adult life, what more could Perot want than to serve his country? Diogenes, call your office.

As Perot set forth in that summer of our discontent, many an observer, close to despair over our moronic political campaigns, wished him well in his task. He could not win, but he could offer a campaign of ideas and frank talk, not sound bites and saxophones and photo ops at flag factories. He might restore some intellectual honesty to the process of choosing our presidents.

Alas. The man, the moment, and the means came together-and Perot blew it. He got the nation’s attention and focused it on the looming disaster of our deficits. Then, tragically, he squandered his promise and become a cackling caricature of himself. But it was not Perots thin skin or what the media meanly called his “paranoia” that limited his influence as a candidate. Finally, it was his inability to learn, to grow, to do his homework the way he must have done 30 years before as he was making his fortune.

Perot began with his one laser-beam insight-that our deficits were eating the seed com, robbing our children of their future-and he had the courage to tell us to “look in the mirror” for the solution. A bold start-but as the months went by, we were still looking. Early on he said he hadn’t had time to develop positions on “everything from frogs to mosquitos.” Sadly, he never did rind the time. “Clean out the burn and take out the trash” is a bumper sticker slogan, not a program. His 19 percent may have been the ice floe left from a melting glacier.

Now, three years later, whither Perot? The revolutionary ideas of’92 have become the conventional wisdom of today. Congress, doing the hard work Perot left to others, is now gnashing its teeth over just how to clean out that blasted barn. With the ’96 candidates already in second gear, the Dallas Perotfest is likely to produce plenty of campaign rhetoric and little new thinking about our problems, Some suggest that Perot is only ego-tripping, summoning the hopefuls to Dallas so they may genuflect and vie for his blessing. If so, let s hope someone meets his standards, and so spares us another Perot campaign.



Our visitors may notice something they wouldn’t have seen five years ago; a real, live boom in downtown- intown?-uptown?-living. As Sally Giddens Stephenson explains starting on page 34, downtown doesn’t roll up the sidewalks at 6 p.m. anymore-a happy sign indeed. A healthy increase in the number of people living in and around the Central Business District can only help ensure the viability of the city’s center.

Speaking of down town, a transition, By the time you read this issue, D Magazine will have become part of the downtown revival we have encouraged lo these many years. Yes, we’re now headquartered high atop 1700 Commerce, 18th floor. We’re near the library, Neiman Marcus, and Pegasus, and close enough to pester ’em at City Hall. The grand city view will remind us, should we ever forget, why this magazine exists. And if a colleague ever complains that he has nothing to write about, I can simply point toward the window and say: “Look.”