Ross Perot - A Tale About (a) Character

The year was 1986. My friend Bruce Soll was planning a meeting for the Reagan Library Finance Board with the President and he needed someone to attend to the needs of the Committee Members as they waited in the White House Reception Area. I volunteered and found myself hours later chatting amiably with Ross H. Perot.

Contrary to the caricaturizing of this man by the esteemed 4th estate (who collectively have caused more individual human misery than most dictatorial regimes in history), Perot is a bright (I would say brilliant), insightful, humorous and principled man.

I knew of him in two ways.

First, I briefly shared an office suite with Perot's daughter Nancy in the White House Office of Presidential Personnel. My father always used to say that parents deserve the children they get. Nancy was nothing like you'd expect a billionaire's daughter to be. Personable, helpful, engaged and engaging, she always struck me as the real McCoy -- a class act -- in short, a mensch(ette). How bad could the guy be if he raised a daughter like that?

Second, I had just finished Ken Follet's book "On the Wings of Eagles," the story of how Ross Perot had authorized and funded a rescue mission of his own EDS employees from the wreckage of Post-Shah Iran. This private rescue effort succeeded while a simultaneous rescue of Americans from the clutches of the Ayatollah Khomeni's radical thugs by the Carter Administration failed miserably in the desert. If the Follet account was true, I was a big fan of this guy Perot.

But one thing from the book nagged at me and I resolved to ask Mr. Perot. So at the appropriate moment (in fact, in an official function like that, there is no appropriate moment for staff to be bugging the Board Members), I approached Mr. Perot and posed the question: "Mr. Perot, you called all of your top EDS lieutenants 'Eagles.' Lone flyers who soared above the rest in a quest for excellence and achievement. How did you know who these people were when you first interviewed them?"

He smiled his now famous smile and said "It's really quite simple. I only looked for three things. First, I look for people who were successful early in life. People who were scout leaders and won spelling bees. People who make a habit of being successful early in life end up being successful later in life. "

I liked that and said that while I had never considered it before, it certainly made alot of sense. "What about the other two?" I asked.

"Second, I find people who love to win. People who love to win, win."

"And" he said "If I couldn't find people who love to win, then I would look for people who hate to lose."

At that moment, the door opened, the President of the United States walked in and my interview was over.