As president, Perot said, he would have the government do only what “the real folks out there” asked him to do nothing more. He said he would capitalize on new interactive communications technologies to develop a people’s consensus on major issues by conducting regularly scheduled electronic town meetings. He proposed that a national referendum should replace the Congress in voting on new federal taxes. And he even offered the resign as president if enough citizens ever phoned and faxed the White House to say he should quit.
Predictor: Perot, Ross
Prediction, in context:In his 1995 book “The Electronic Republic: Reshaping Democracy in the Information Age,” Lawrence Grossman, former president of NBC News and PBS, writes: ”Multimillionaire H. Ross Perot, the arrogant and colorful on-again, off-again political neophyte from Texas … ran for president as an independent without the support of a single identifiable political constituency, and was taken seriously enough to change the dynamics of the entire election campaign … As president, Perot said, he would have the government do only what ‘the real folks out there’ asked him to do nothing more. He said he would capitalize on new interactive communications technologies to develop a people’s consensus on major issues by conducting regularly scheduled electronic town meetings. He proposed that a national referendum should replace the Congress in voting on new federal taxes. And he even offered the resign as president if enough citizens ever phoned and faxed the White House to say he should quit. In the end, Perot’s populist appeal won him almost 20 percent of the national vote, more than any other independent presidential contender received since Theodore Roosevelt tried to regain the White House on the Bull Moose ticket. In 1992, political commentators of every stripe, from liberal Anthony Lewis in The New York Times to conservative George Will in Newsweek, deplored this new populist electronic political trend. They were appalled at the idea that the United States should have a ‘plebiscite presidency’ and ‘rule by applause meter.’ Direct democracy, wrote columnist Charles Krauthammer, is the ‘highway to tyranny,’ signifying the end of reasoned, experienced, deliberative constitutional political decision making and sure to lead the country down the slippery slope to demagoguery.”
Date of prediction: January 1, 1992
Topic of prediction: Global Relationships/Politics
Subtopic: Campaigns/Voting
Name of publication: The Electronic Republic (book)
Title, headline, chapter name: Chapter 1: Transforming Democracy – An Overview
Quote Type: Paraphrase
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
Pages 17-20
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Guarino, Jennifer Anne