Although its final convulsions have not quite ceased, the Reform Party's obituary will soon be written. Here are this journalist's speculative history of Reform Party secrets, an epitaph suggestion for the tombstone, and a wilted lily or two to perfume the stink it leaves behind.

The Reform Party was not a lovechild born out of political idealism or passion. It was (according to details and rumors this writer has collected during radio interviews and from articles over many years) conceived during a secret 1991 meeting between Ross Perot and a then-obscure Southern governor from nearby Arkansas and his wife, Hillary.

In 1991, Ross Perot was phenomenally wealthy, by some measures the 44th richest person in the United States. The largest share of this wealth had come not from selling goods or services to ordinary Americans, but through government contracts. Perot in at least one recent year had spent more than any other person hiring Washington, D.C., lobbyists to grease the palms and legislative agendas of politicians. Perot's company, coincidentally, was awarded astronomically lucrative contracts to do much of the computer work associated with Social Security.

In 1991, most Democrats were in despair over the presidential election to come the following year. Triumph in the Gulf War had given incumbent president George Bush stratospheric popularity polled at almost 90 percent approval. [A young Senator Albert Arnold (named after Benedict, no doubt) Gore was one Democrat who voted for the war, but he had told both parties that he would vote for or against the war based solely on which party gave him more minutes for a speech during television prime time to boost his personal fame. The Republicans offered five more minutes than the Democrats, so Gore voted to put American lives at risk.] Bush seemed unbeatable for re-election, and senior Democrats like Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri were unwilling to risk their money, political IOUs, or reputation in a race where their defeat seemed certain.

But Governor Bill Clinton was eager to take that gamble. He had little reputation or career to lose. He felt lucky. He had become a small national joke after boring the 1988 Democratic National Convention into booing him for giving one of the longest, dullest speeches in history. But his political burial turned to resurrection when Johnny Carson, seeing humor in Clinton's humiliation, invited the young governor to appear on the Tonight Show, where he got laughs and noticed.

And in 1991, Bill Clinton, as a careful student of Communist tactics and history, knew that George Bush could be beaten. The model for this was clear from the South American nation of Chile, where in 1970 the Marxist Salvadore Allende Gossens was elected president by a plurality of less than 40 percent because two other candidates split the votes of the nation's overwhelmingly anti-Communist majority. Allende then rushed to use his executive powers to nationalize private property, confiscate wealth, and empower Leftist groups to consolidate power and prevent any future election that could depose him. [In 1973 the Chilean military under Gen. Augusto Pinochet removed Allende in a coup during which Allende either committed suicide (the pro-Pinochet history) or was unconstitutionally assassinated (the Marxist version) before he could make his Marxist dictatorship permanent.]

Clinton believed he could use the same Marxist model for victory in the United States. With all serious rivals unwilling to seek the Democratic Party presidential nomination, the road was clear for Clinton to easily seize control of that party. All that was needed was a way to split the opposition Republican–conservative vote.

But how could Clinton split the opposition in America's stable two-party system? This was not a parliamentary system with multiple parties and factions like Chile.

How could Clinton play "divide and conquer" as cynical politicians had routinely done since at least ancient Roman times?

The Clintons needed a wealthy egomaniac who loved money even more than political power. They found such a person in Texas billionaire and lifelong Democrat Ross Perot.

During their 1991 secret meeting, the stories suggest, the Clintons made Ross Perot an offer he couldn't refuse. They knew that few Republicans would cross over to vote for a Democrat, but this was unnecessary for Clinton's victory. The only thing needed was some way to make conservatives either stay home on election day or vote for some third alternative that siphoned their votes away from President Bush.

Perot would pilot that third alternative, to be called the Reform Party.

Democratic analysts had identified cracks in the Reagan coalition of Republicans, social conservatives, and blue-collar Democrats. The Reform Party would be designed to drive wedges at these precise weak points in an effort to break the Reagan–Bush coalition apart.

The new Reform Party would rag on Bush for violating his "No New Taxes" pledge, persuading conservatives he was untrustworthy. (Democrats would be laughed at if they made such accusations, for it was congressional Democrats who compelled the pledge breaking and eagerly spent the extra revenue.)

The new Reform Party would aim to siphon off blue-collar workers, telling them that their jobs and wages were threatened by the "giant sucking sound" of Republican-encouraged free trade policies that transferred America's prosperity to third-world nations such as Mexico. This preaching was calculated to foment appeals to just enough nationalism, xenophobia, and racism to unglue many working-class and Southern Democrats and latent Populists from the party of Lincoln and Reagan.

"You lost your job, or afraid you might?" the message would go. "Not paid enough? It's them Republicans and their unpatriotic multinational corporation money-men shipping your jobs to dark-skinned foreigners overseas, or letting 'em come here to undercut your wages! We need to get under the hood, Larry, and fix this. I'm doing this for the volunteers." (Clinton would merely accelerate such things, of course, but the yahoos and sincere patriots angry with Bush and the economic downturn in 1991–92 were never told that Clinton also favored NAFTA and GATT and was backed by many of the same giant corporate donors as Bush.)

What was in it for Ross Perot? He could have a giant ego trip, certainly, and be glorified and put into the history books by the same liberal national media that in the end would endorse and support whomever the Democrats nominated.

But Bill and Hillary offered Perot something far more—wealth. Wealth so immense that it would make King Croesus or Bill Gates seem like poor beggars by comparison. The source for Ross, as in the past, would be socialism and the rich contracts given to his enterprises therefrom.

Bill and Hillary had a plan. They wanted to nationalize one-seventh of the American economy through a health-care plan that would essentially outlaw the private practice of medicine. Virtually all medical dollars would flow from and through the federal government.

If Ross Perot helped make this possible by using his new Reform Party to defeat his old nemesis George Bush and elect Bill and Hillary Clinton as co-rulers of America, strings would be pulled to guarantee that Perot and those companies he designated would receive the bulk of lucrative contracts to run this immense healthcare dictatorship. A piece of every dollar spent for health care in America would end up in Ross Perot's pocket.

This sinister scheme succeeded in some ways and failed in others, but not without some fits, starts, and surprises.

The Reform Party was launched with the secret aim of electing Bill Clinton by draining only a fraction of Republican support. What neither Perot nor the Clintons anticipated was just how frustrated, hungry for genuine reform, and angry with both major parties the American people were. Perot became the lightning rod for a huge burgeoning thunderstorm of popular discontent.

Perot's popularity began to surge, and in some polls it showed signs of matching and then surpassing Clinton's and Bush's. Like the Southern California man a few years ago who attached helium weather balloons to his aluminum lawn chair, thinking they might lift him a foot or two off the ground, then suddenly found himself looking down in terror from more than 1,000 feet in the air, this was unexpected. Ross Perot wanted to be rich. He did not want to be President, a puppet with 10,000 other people jerking his strings every day.

But if the polls were right, Ross Perot was, to the surprise of all including himself, at risk of defeating both his co-conspirator Clinton and Bush—and himself being elected President.

Something had to prevent this. Whether on his own initiative or because Clinton persuaded or blackmailed him, Perot, at the height of his soaring popularity, suddenly declared he was quitting the race. He gave two reasons. One was that some mysterious agents he associated with George Bush were somehow involved in disrupting his daughter's wedding. This sounded wacky, and Perot did little to shed light on the alleged incident.

Perot's second reason for bailing out, he declared, was that the Democratic Party had somehow fixed the inner flaws that he said had prompted him to abandon the two parties in the first place. Perot, in other words, tried to throw all his support and followers' votes entirely to the Democratic Party.

But months later polls were starting to show that the Reform Party voters Perot had abandoned and cut adrift might be drifting back to the Republican coalition and George Bush. If they did, Clinton would lose.

And so in his second most bizarre act of the 1992 presidential campaign, months after he withdrew, Ross Perot re-enlisted in the race. In his ads and speeches Perot would aim 95 percent of his ammunition not at Bill Clinton but only at incumbent Republican George Bush.

Perot displayed an antipathy towards his fellow Texan that went far deeper than mere politics. It was clearly personal and highly emotional. Had they as young men once both been rivals for the hand of the same girl? Or in a business deal? Whatever the reason, Perot then as now seems bent on hurting George Bush and his family.

In November, 1992, Perot captured 19 percent of the popular vote. He did not win a single state, but in Utah he came in second ahead of Bill Clinton. This was far short of the 35+ percent support Perot held in popularity polls prior to his race exit-and-reentry, but 19 percent was enough conservative and populist votes to achieve his real objective—the defeat of George Bush. (Perot ever since has claimed he took votes equally from Bush and Clinton, but no serious analyst doubts that Perot attacks suppressed voter turnout for Bush.)

Clinton became president with the smallest plurality in American history—43 percent. This minority vote is comparable only to the 1968 victory margin of the man with whom Clinton will likely be compared in history, Richard Nixon, also a three-way race against Hubert Humphrey and Alabama Gov. George Wallace. And millions of Americans who had been gulled into voting for Perot woke up the next morning like drunks not sure how the blood stains got there, looked into their bathroom mirrors, and said to themselves: "Oh my God, what have I done?"

The founder of the Democratic Party, President Thomas Jefferson, advised for the good of the republic that "great issues should not be forced on slender majorities." Clinton had no popular majority at all. He had won a scant plurality through a gimmick, a deception. Fifty-seven percent of the people had voted against him. But like Marxist Salvadore Allende, he rushed to impose a socialist dictatorship over American health care. One of his objectives might have been—and might yet be—to pay off his political debt to Ross Perot with lucrative government contracts.

The Clintons' effort to ram through their socialist scheme failed for lack of a popular mandate, leaving them to wage a yet-ongoing Fabian crusade to impose piece by piece the dictatorship they were unable to impose wholesale. Public backlash at such high-handedness cost Democrats control of the Senate and, for the first time in 40 years, of the House of Representatives where all tax and spending bills must originate.

In panic, in 1996 the Clintons again enlisted their clandestine ally Ross Perot to enter the race and direct all his propaganda gunfire against the Republicans. Once again Perot ran, giving Clinton tens of millions of dollars in free campaign expenditures against his opponent. Once again millions of voters, adding up to nine percent of ballots cast, were siphoned off by Perot. Clinton was reelected, again by a plurality but not a majority of votes nationwide.

In year 2000, it appeared that Ross Perot had lost control of his plaything, the Reform Party. Last summer, "the volunteers" rose up and voted to oust Perot's personal sock puppet, New England Democrat Russell Verney, as party figurehead. Verney was replaced by Jack Gargan, the choice of the party's highest elected public official, Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura. Verney had promised that if defeated he would step down immediately, but after his defeat Verney reneged on his promise, clinging to power until January 1 and thereby blocking all efforts to tighten party rules to prevent a carpetbagger such as Pat Buchanan from using his outsider minions to seize control of the Reform Party.

Gargan assumed the chairmanship of the Reform Party at the start of January but quickly discovered, as he said last Saturday, that Ross Perot and his Perobots refused to let Gargan examine the financial or other records of the party. Those records might reveal that some state officials put in place by Perot or Verney have misappropriated funds for their own or other suspicious purposes.

Knowing that Perot's supporters had mobilized (according to some, in violation of Reform Party rules) to remove Gargan at last Saturday's meeting and replace him with Perot & Pat Buchanan loyalist Pat Choate, Gov. Ventura on Friday preemptively "disaffiliated" himself from the Reform Party. The party, Ventura declared, was now "hopelessly dysfunctional." Ventura urged the Minnesota state party likewise to "disaffiliate" from Perot's party and reconstitute itself as the Minnesota Independence Party. Knowing of Ventura's decision, tycoon Donald Trump on Friday also declared the Reform Party "a mess" and said he would not seek the presidential nomination of a party so eccentric that it attracted the likes of racist David Duke, Marxist Lenora Fulani, and Buchanan.

Patrick Buchanan continues to seek the Reform Party nomination, in part because the party has $12.6 million in federal campaign matching funds to spend. His sister, Bay, who weeks ago was revealed to be pocketing many thousands of dollars for herself for overseeing a still-open "Ronald Reagan Presidential Campaign Fund" that the Reagan family did not know existed, will almost certainly be managing her brother's campaign and spending the $12.6 million if he becomes the party nominee.

Some believe Ross Perot will soon return to reclaim his former status as nominee of the party he owns and runs like his personal feudal fiefdom. Ross may love being the star too much to let anyone else grab this spotlight. In 1996, he slapped aside former Colorado Gov. Richard Lamm when it appeared Lamm might win the Reform nomination. Perot and Buchanan are of like mind against free trade, but Buchanan is pro-life while Perot's wife has been a big wheel in the Dallas chapter of Planned Parenthood. Worse, Buchanan, by appealing to union workers and capitalism-haters, might siphon as many or more votes from the Democratic candidate as from the Republican, and this is clearly not what Perot wants.

With his calls for campaign-finance reform, Senator John McCain (R., Ariz.) has positioned himself to be the de facto Reform Party candidate and lure its voters. He and Perot are also both Naval Academy graduates with a passionate interest in Prisoners of War. New party chair Pat Choate on Monday said that a 1997 U.S. Supreme Court ruling and state laws would prohibit McCain from simultaneously being the candidate of two different parties on the same ballot in 35 of the 50 states. Choate did not say whether it would be legal for the Reform Party to pick McCain nevertheless and transfer to his campaign war chest its $12.6 million in matching funds. Having left the Reform Party, former Navy demolition commando Ventura now says he would be honored to be McCain's vice presidential running mate.

McCain last weekend made an explicit appeal to voters of Libertarian Party, the surviving third party anchored firmly not on personalities but on consistent free-market principles. McCain also continued his mantra that his greatest hero was Teddy Roosevelt, the Big Government imperialist whose 1912 "Bull Moose" third party effort split the Republican vote and handed the Presidency to Democrat Woodrow Wilson. My surmise is that if McCain wins the Republican nomination via Democrat and Independent votes and alienates conservatives, he might win the White House in November but will almost certainly lose the Republican House of Representatives. If conservatives sit out the 2000 election, then those who come to vote for McCain will be less likely also to vote for the Republican on their ballot running for Congress.

Is the Clinton–Perot scenario laid out above true or misguided speculation? It is woven from many threads of evidence, analysis, and rumor pieced together from hundreds of articles and interviews. Most Americans would at first glance prefer to dismiss it as wrong or a mistaken. But it provides a plausible set of motives and explanations for Ross Perot's peculiar behavior throughout the past decade. It is a model, an hypothesis that fits the facts we know and makes coherent sense of them. If you have a better explanation, please let me know.

The Reform Party is dead. Let's drive a stake through its heart and bury it so that real reform can be reborn. And on its gravestone chisel these words: "Here Is Buried the Reform Party, 1991–2000, Where Ross Perot Lies."