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Q. But the other question is, Will the people agree? There are 250 million Americans with very divergent interests, different ideas, and at some point somebody's got to cut through and make some decisions, maybe even some hard choices --
A. Well, this is Congress's job.
Q. You're not going to get 250 million people, or even 500 members of Congress, to agree.
A. You don't expect a unanimous vote. You don't expect everybody to agree. The majority rules in our country, and let's assume you built a consensus that is more than a majority. Then you do it.
Q. How do you keep special interests from dominating the town meetings, from distorting what you see as the will of the people?
A. I want to revise the system so that it is not so money hungry at election time. I want to dramatically reduce the cost of running for office so that people don't have to spend so much of their time raising money.
I would personally -- and I will be discussing this openly with the people and the Congress, and everybody will have his day -- feel that this PAC money, soft money, these giant contributions that you can still make, should be eliminated. But if we do eliminate them, then we have to have a way that people can run for office without having millions of dollars.
To run for Governor of Texas is $10 million or $15 million. To run for Senator, I don't know how many millions it is, but it's obscene. The presidential race is far, far, far more than the numbers quoted in print because of all the soft money. Republicans now boast that they have $200 million in soft money.
Q. And you're prepared to match that?
A. I'm prepared. If the people want me to run as their servant, then I will do everything I can to give them a world-class campaign. Now, please don't translate that into "Perot pledges to spend 200 million bucks." I never pledged to spend 100 million bucks.
Q. You talked a little while ago about the mud wrestling that's going on. How different a campaign will yours be? Would we see fewer speaking engagements, less traveling, or what?
A. I will have an unconventional campaign, but I cannot tell my competitors what my strategy and tactics are, which I'm sure you can understand.
Q. How do you assess the Republican and Democratic reactions to you?
A. The Democrats are rational, and the Republicans are not. The Democrats are just running their campaign. But the Republicans -- you know what the Republicans are doing. They call you reporters all day, every day.
Q. You're talking about dirty tricks?
A. Let me say this. If you are in the publishing business and you don't know what I'm talking about, well, for some reason they put you on their exclusion list.
Q. If Bill Clinton's candidacy were to fall apart, and the Democrats had no candidate and turned to you, would you accept?
A. That won't happen. No way that would happen.
Q. But if it were to happen?
+ A. It wouldn't happen. I don't think there's any chance that Governor Clinton will not be the nominee.
Q. What if there is a "Draft Perot" effort within the Democratic Party? A couple of party leaders, Willie Brown in California, for example, have already mentioned this. Would you accept that nomination?