When Ross Perot reentered the presidential race in October, the New York Times described voters’ reaction as “overwhelming hostility.” In a New York Times/CBS News poll, 72 percent of registered voters said he shouldn’t have gotten back in, and 56 percent called him a distraction from real issues.
Bernarr Macfadden. Macfadden was an early-20th-century crackpot health guru and multimillionaire publisher, guilty of setting into motion such modern evils as confession magazines and gossip columns. Today Macfadden Publishing Inc. continues his legacy with such giants as Modern Romances and True Confession. Macfadden’s run for the 1936 Republican nomination culminated a bizarre quest for the presidency that included making Eleanor Roosevelt the highly paid editor of a short-lived magazine called Babies, Just Babies in hopes of getting a cabinet post out of FDR.
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Changing political fashions in the 60s forced Smith to retire, to Eureka Springs, Arkansas, where he perpetrated a number of religious attractions and wondered why “so many millions of my fellow Americans just don’t like me.” We probably shouldn’t insult Mr. Perot by comparing him with Mr. Smith. But Smith would have been pretty fun at a debate, too.
