The Ross Perot you don't know.

• Author: Elkind, Peter

The things that make him a great leader would make him a dangerous profit.

I'm better than that," lamented Ross Perot. He pounded a bony fist on his antique desk. "I could have gotten that fire put out'"

On a September morning a few years back, Perot was sitting in his North Dallas office, blaming himself for the incineration of Yellowstone National Park. "I could've raised enough hell that they would've had to put that fire out."

Somehow it didn't seem at all strange that this private citizen, who had accumulated a $3 billion fortune selling computer services, regarded fighting forest fires as not merely his mandate, but his burden. And it doesn't seem strange today that the new burden he'd like to shoulder is running this country. No public figure in America defines his personal mission in more cosmic terms than Perot; no public figure so conspicuously embraces the role of savior. Ross Perot is better than that: It might be the slogan for his rearguard charge against George Bush and Bill Clinton. It is certainly the perfect expression of his confidence.

Ross Perot is utterly self-assured, the sort of person who walks into someone else's house and turns on the lights. He is, he says, a simple man. Yet his legend is full of contradictions. He is a political neophyte who wants to save our political system, a billionaire who claims to speak for the little guy, an antigovernment crusader who made his fortune on government contracts, and the consummate noncandidate, now actively running for president. It is these contradictions that leave him exhaustively chronicled but poorly explained. Who is Ross Perot?

Packs of reporters have told the Perot legend: born in Texarkana (on the Texas side, of course), a salesman before he was a teenager (garden seeds, saddles, newspaper subscriptions), class president at the Naval Academy (twice), and IBM supersalesperson (one year he earned the maximum annual commission IBM allowed by January 19). He founded Electronic Data Systems (EDS) in 1962; six years later he became a megamillionaire. Fortune called him the "fastest richest Texan ever." Today, he is the 13th wealthiest man in America.

But Ross Perot has never been content with mere money. In the sixties, he spent $1.5 million to hand-deliver mail, medicine, and Christmas meals to American POWs in North Vietnam. In the seventies, he financed the rescue of two EDS employees from an Iranian prison. By the eighties, his targets had multiplied: drug use, mediocrity in Texas public schools, myopia in corporate America. And today, he's set his sights on the American system in general.

It is no coincidence that the historical figure Perot admires most is Winston Churchill. At the moment of crisis, Churchill did for England what Perot wants to do for America: He mobilized the will of a nation. But to what end? The Coy Candidate will issue no position papers; he is decidedly vague on the details. To understand the current presidential hopeful, then, you have to plumb the secrets of Perot past-the shrewd salesman, the plain-living billionaire, the judgmental philanthropist, the crusading school reformer, and the political pragmatist whose firm beliefs in efficient government, strong public schools, and drug-free kids sometimes make little allowance for niceties like the Constitution.

No one can doubt Ross Perot's good intentions; it's clear that the nation's problems deeply engage him. And no ego in America is better primed to take the pounding. But before we line up behind Perot, we had better get to know him: a man whose righteousness and impatience might shake things up in Washington as they have in Texas. And who, when things finally settle down, might leave some nagging...