Must we relive Election Day ’92? It wasn’t that interesting 1st time around

PEROT: Looks good next to Trump

I must confess; I actually gained a bit of respect (sort of) for Texas billionaire H. Ross Perot – but only because Donald Trump comes across as a bigger buffoon than the big-eared would-be politico ever was.

For Trump made it seem like he expects to fill the same niche that Perot filled some 23 years ago when he made his initial presidential bid.

REMEMBER HOW THE 1992 presidential election cycle came down to George Bush (the elder) against Bill Clinton, with Perot deciding that the public needed to pick someone else – and that somebody was meant to be him?

TRUMP: No ears, but bigger ego

There are those people who, to this day, claim Perot was the deciding factor – stealing votes away from Bush and resulting in the two terms of Clinton as president.

Of course, I’d argue that a guy who only got 19 percent of the popular vote nationally and was unable to win the Electoral College in any state wasn’t that much of a factor.

Perot inspired a certain segment of the electorate that usually is politically apathetic to actually get off their duffs and cast votes for president. Without Perot on the ballot, Bill Clinton still would have won, but the voter turnout would have been a record low.

SO WHAT’S MY point in reciting this mini-history lesson? It’s just that it seems we’re going to get the same circumstances arising come the 2016 election cycle.

CLINTON: The better half?

A Clinton (as in former first lady Hillary) against a Bush (as in presidential son and brother Jeb). With a rich guy with an over-bloated ego deciding he’s running for president as well.

That is what Donald Trump has become – just a slightly more urban version of a rich buffoon who thinks he’s entitled to his wealth and anyone he can buy off into thinking he has a clue.

The Hill newspaper out of Capitol Hill in Washington reported that Trump says he’s inclined to back away from his talk of running for the GOP nomination for president because the Republican National Committee isn’t showing him the kind of respect he thinks he deserves.

BUSH: Erasing the taste of W?

IF HE RUNS as a political independent, he can go about saying or doing whatever he wants without anyone letting him know he’s become an embarrassment to the people whom he would theoretically be representing.

Then, Trump wouldn’t be stuck in a field of 16 (including himself, thus far) Republican candidates. He’d be the lone wolf.

Although I think it would expose Trump for the political weakling he truly is. His roughly one-quarter of the Republican vote that polls show he has would actually be ridiculous.

Since the rest of the party would wind up backing the resulting party winner – which could be former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

HILLARY VS. JEB, with Trump also taking some votes. I could envision exactly which kind of people would bother voting for the man who thinks the whole world needs to be branded with the “Trump” logo (Would the White House become the Trump Mansion?).

It may well be the nativist element with a particularly irrational hang-up concerning Mexico – the ones who think that Trump made some legitimate point with his trip to Laredo and who are delusional enough to think an impenetrable wall can be erected.

MEZVINSKY: The first grand-daughter?

And perhaps the ones who don’t trust Bush (the Third) because he married a Mexican woman; making the potential first children Mexican-American by ethnicity.

A truly xenophobic campaign that would wind up being more goofy and embarrassing to the nation than anything Perot ever said or did.

IT MIGHT ALSO be the element that ensures we get the concept of “President Hillary R. Clinton” and Charlotte Mezvinsky as the “first granddaughter.”

Unless the Democratic Party side of the electorate decides that Clinton has campaigned unofficially for so many years that they’re now tired of her before they ever get a chance to experience her.

A topic for another day’s commentary, to be sure!

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