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Ross Perot

Ross Perot is the President of the United States in the campaign's alternate 1993, the winner of a 1992 election that the Paranatural Incident Task Force helped to upend. He is a fictional version of the real businessman and candidate, written as a character in the show's alternate history; nothing here describes the real person.
Type NPC (fictionalized historical figure)
Aliases Perot; President Perot; the President-elect
Affiliation President of the United States (from January 1993)
Status Alive, in office (as of Radford Horrors 04)
First appearance Roulet Estate 03 (voice only); first mentioned in Appalachia 07
Played by Andre

Description

Perot is almost entirely an offstage character. He is heard once, on the telephone, and otherwise acts through subordinates: Big Bill carries his decisions to the team before the inauguration, and FBI Director Rudy Giuliani carries them afterwards. (Roulet Estate 01, Roulet Estate 03, Radford Horrors 01)

Andre looked up the real Perot's voice before performing the phone call; Dante said the result sounded like a D&D goblin. (Roulet Estate 03)

He has no patience for paranormal reporting. Shown the team's Radford file, his reaction, as Andre recapped it, was "What the fuck is this? This says it was like a giant bug." Huell Kendrick is more hopeful: Perot will straighten out the economy, because "He's a businessman." (Radford Horrors 02, Radford Horrors 04)

History

The 1992 campaign

During The Things in Appalachia, in October 1992, Perot is the third candidate in a race between George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton. When the Georgia scandal breaks, Huell predicts that it is "not going to stop my man Ross Perot", and Zack looks up the real result for the table: about 19 percent of the vote, one of the most successful third-party runs. (Appalachia 07)

The Georgia case changes the race. After the Clinton surveillance scandal, which Andre calls "the double scandal", Perot is above 45 percent in most polls and Bush is clearly ahead only in Texas. Andre later explained the alternate history: Perot "just needed two October surprises", and one event supplied both, with the incumbent caught spying on a challenger who was himself caught in a sex scandal. (Walkers 01, Walkers 08)

The Walkers in Skin is set in the days around the election. The race is described as a tight three-way contest a few days out; Election Day, November 3, 1992, falls during the night at Ballard High School; the next morning Donald McManley reports that the count is unfinished and that Perot has taken Ohio. As the team drives out of Roosevelt with the wounded, the radio announces that Perot has won. (Walkers 02, Walkers 07, Walkers 08, Walkers 09)

President-elect

On Christmas Eve 1992 Big Bill tells the team what the President-elect thinks of them. Perot believes the task force is "a cover for Bush's weaponization of the FBI against his political enemies". He has asked Big Bill to resign, will disband and reassign the task force on Inauguration Day, and is forming a task force of his own to look into the "insurgency incidents", the official cover story for the Utah disaster. Dante's hope that Perot might reward the team for winning him the election comes to nothing. (Roulet Estate 01, Roulet Estate 02)

The team's drunken trip to the Roulet house on Inauguration Day 1993 began, according to Diane, with talk of finding proof for Ross Perot. (Roulet Estate 01)

President

By spring 1993 the task force is gone and its members are scattered. Andrew Howard is alone in a New York hotel room when the phone rings and the President himself is on the line. Andrew asks whether he has the right Andrew Howard. (Roulet Estate 03)

Quote

"This is the President of the United States. I need you to come in. Something's happened in Virginia." (Andre as Perot, Roulet Estate 03)

What had happened is laid out at the start of The Radford Horrors. More people had gone missing in Radford. Perot sent five career agents of his own choosing, the missing FBI task force, and they vanished too. He then read the original team's classified reports, found them unacceptable, and when Director William Sessions stood by them ("it's a giant bug") fired him on the spot, with no transition. Giuliani, a New York lawyer and longtime friend and supporter of Perot, was appointed the same morning. (Radford Horrors 01, Radford Horrors 02)

Perot's orders, relayed by Giuliani, bring the old team back only as consultants under Special Agent Daniel Webster, whom he trusts: find the missing agents, and establish an "acceptable fact pattern" for the first Radford case. After the standoff at the Safe Environment Fund fence, Webster is reprimanded: the President wants no more "cowboy shit" and everything done by the book. (Radford Horrors 01, Radford Horrors 02, Radford Horrors 04)

In Moscow, Boris Yeltsin asks the Biz a few questions about Perot. The Biz says he knows very little, and keeps to himself his belief that Perot will probably "ax the whole thing". The impression he gets is that the Russians had hoped to destabilize the United States and now face a counterpart they do not understand. (Radford Horrors 01)

Relationships

  • Daniel Webster. Webster did State Department logistics in 1978 for the operation to rescue Perot's employees in Iran, and Perot trusts him. Webster shares Perot's view of the old task force: that Bush picked a group of "fuck-up agents" he could use for political dirty work. (Radford Horrors 01, Radford Horrors 02)
  • Rudy Giuliani. A vocal supporter made FBI Director on the morning Sessions was fired. (Radford Horrors 01, Radford Horrors 02)
  • The task force. Perot disbanded it as a political instrument of his predecessor, then had to call its leader personally when his own team disappeared. (Roulet Estate 01, Roulet Estate 03, Radford Horrors 01)
  • George H. W. Bush. His defeated predecessor, whose FBI he distrusts. (Roulet Estate 01)

Unresolved

  • What Perot found "unacceptable" in the Radford reports. Dante's guess was that he does not like reading that it was "aliens and shit"; Ezra's was that he objected to a cover story. Andre's recap in the next session supports Dante: Perot could not believe the report said a giant bug. (Radford Horrors 01, Radford Horrors 02)
  • It is never established whether the task force Perot promised for the "insurgency incidents" is the same group as the five agents lost in Radford. (Roulet Estate 01, Radford Horrors 02)

Trivia

  • The players call the setting "the Perot-verse". Zack first asked "Have we entered the Perot-verse?" on the in-fiction Election Day. (Walkers 07, Walkers 08, Radford Horrors 04)
  • When Andre settled on a domestic insurgency as the cover story for Utah, Dante's reaction was: "Guess what, Ross Perot? You're gonna have a rough first fucking day." (Roulet Estate 01)
  • Webster's reference to the 1978 Iran rescue is to a real event in Perot's business career. (Radford Horrors 02)
  • While the table speculated about the future of the Perot-verse, Andre offered a bureaucratic mistake in which the United States accidentally nukes North Dakota. (Radford Horrors 04)

Appearances