Q. It seems as if you're ready to run.
A. It's fascinating. If we had been just sitting here and I said, "I'll bet we can find a guy with a bad Texas accent who can in one minute say to people on television, 'If you want to put my name on the ballot in all 50 states, I $ will run as your candidate,' " and then I'd said, "Now let's go try to get someone to take the other side of that bet," everybody would have bet you anything you wanted to, because that won't happen, and I mention this to make one point. What is happening has nothing to do with me.
It has everything to do with people's concerns about where the country is and where the country is going. There is a deep concern out there about the kind of country our children will live in that I don't believe has surfaced in the polls yet.
And if I want 100,000 volunteers more, all I need to do is go on some national show with adversarial people . . .
Q. Adversarial people like journalists?
A. Yeah, well, like the Sunday shows. Now, it's interesting that when people are rude or arrogant or condescending, the switchboard just goes nuts for three days, people signing up because it makes them angry.
My last observation, and then you can just ask me anything you want, is that I have never been around a process that is more irrelevant to the desired end result than this. The process we have for selecting a President is irrelevant to getting a good President for the people.
What we have now is mud wrestling and dirty tricks and Willie Horton, and just stuff that everybody goes into a feeding frenzy over. It encourages virtually everybody who might be a good President not to run.
Q. You're in the process of cutting down on public appearances and boning up on the issues. How is that going?
A. That's going well. I have large, talented teams doing that. Everybody in the press wants to know who's on the team. I'm saying, "I'm sorry, I can't tell you, because you'd spend all their time talking to them."
Q. What sort of people are on the team?
A. It's a cross section. For example, when I'm working on economic positions, I want to make sure I have a spectrum. I don't want just the true believers, say, on supply-side economics. I want to hear all the different views. This is the way I do things. Then, from all those different views, we will come up with what our position is. Whether we're working on a new health-care system, the economy, a new tax system, or whatever it is, I want to get everybody's views.
Q. Are you being briefed on this process daily?
A. It's more than being briefed. Did you see Saturday Night Live? On television once, I said, "My style is I have to see it, feel and taste it." And Saturday Night Live added, "And pass it through my lower intestine." But I have to at least see it, feel it and taste it. I don't like to get briefed at the end. I like to be involved with it as it's being put together, so that's where we are right now.
But the phone banks are going crazy with working folks saying, "Why are you wasting your time on this? We're not interested in your damn positions, Perot. We're interested in your principles." Isn't that fascinating?
Q. How would you summarize your principles?