Well, that was fast. Just two weeks ago, Ross Perot was refusing to endorse either Mitt Romney or Barack Obama, saying he was equally unimpressed with both candidates and their approach to the national debt.
“Nobody that’s running really talks about it, about what we have to do, and why we have to do it,” he told C-SPAN on October 1. “They would prefer not to have it discussed.”
But now Perot is singing a different tune. Perhaps he watched the October 3 debate in which President Obama presented no plan at all for tackling the entitlement crisis.
In a statement issued this morning by the Romney campaign he said: “We can’t afford four more years in which national debt mushrooms out of control, our government grows, and our military is weakened. Mitt has the background, experience, intelligence, and integrity to turn things around. He has my absolute support.”
Perot is no longer a national political figure, but his public image as an incorrigible opponent of waste, debt, and government inefficiency could still register with some of the independent voters who backed him for president in 1992 and 1996. He won 19 percent of the vote in his first run, and 8 percent in his second run.