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I’ve told you about my confusion regarding The Pillars of the Earth which was caused, by my estimation, from its adaptation in 2010 as a miniseries. However, before Ken Follett saw The Pillars of the Earth published (1989), an earlier “best seller” had been turned into a miniseries. Follett’s non-fiction work On Wings of Eagles (1993) aired as a miniseries (same name) on NBC in 1986.

In 1986, I was much younger than I am now and I didn’t have regular TV access. As a result, I wouldn’t have watched this NBC Special even if it was something I would have been into at the time. Beyond that, I can’t remember seeing any ads or promos. But let’s be honest, who can remember what commercials they caught going on 40 years in the past?

As the decades went by, and as I began associating the title On Wings of Eagles with Ken Follett, I still don’t think I had a good grasp on what, exactly, the book was about. Back in 2012 I picked myself up a copy (stuffed into an order with some birthday presents) without really knowing the subject. I’m pretty sure I at least recognized it had to do with Iran and their Islamic revolution but beyond that I was fuzzy. I have a suspicion that I mixed up President Jimmy Carter’s failed Operation Eagle Claw and Israel’s successful Operation Thunderbolt (aka the Raid on Entebbe), along with other unrelated events, to form a weird idea of what this story was to be about. So while I did buy it, I immediately placed it onto my bookshelf and there it has sat for more than ten years. It’s hard to say, exactly, how I got to this point. Even ten years tests the limits of my memory these days.

However much I misunderstood in getting here, I decided it was high time to just read the book and get it all straight.

The title of the book is derived from Exodus. “You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to Myself” (Exodus 19:4). If you recognize the reference, that context certainly illuminates the intent of the author. If you do not, perhaps the way Amazon titles the book (On Wings of Eagles: The Inspiring True Story of One Man’s Patriotic Spirit–and His Heroic Mission to Save His Countrymen) will convey a similar sentiment. This is a story about the extraordinary efforts and accomplishments of the one man behind it all – Ross Perot. In fact, you will learn while reading that the term “eagles” is a Perot-ism; this is what he called his most valued employees with the observation that “eagles don’t flock.”

It must be clear from my meandering intro but, if not, I had neither read this novel nor seen the TV series in 1992 when Ross Perot ran for President of the United States. If I had, maybe I would have cast my vote differently that year.

You see, to my 1992 eyes, Ross Perot was not an impressive candidate. While I appreciated his powerpoint* campaign style I found his “giant sucking sound” and like expressions to be over-the-top bombastic. For those readers half my age, imagine MAGA but 10 inches shorter and with a Texarkana accent**.

Even without Mr. Perot in the mix, it was a bizarre campaign year… and I say that using today’s standards.

Ronald Reagan’s vice-president, George H. W. Bush, was running for reelection. One might imagine that his election to a first term was as much an endorsement of Reagan’s successful tenure than anything Bush-specific. By 1992, though, we knew what it was like to have a President Bush. I know that I, for one, had a hard time swallowing that a former CIA director was somehow the reincarnation of Reagan. But who was the alternative? The Democrats had put up an unlikely candidate, the Governor of Arkansas, who came from behind in the primaries to get the nomination. He was indeed “alternative” in more senses of the word than one. He had his youth and a sense of cool*** and probably managed some party crossover on that basis. For all that, though, he managed to squeak out only 43% of the popular vote. Had this been a straight up R v D race, he may well have lost… but it was not.

The weakness in Bush’s resume was challenged, unsuccessfully, in the Republican primaries. Normally, a successful President (especially one with Bush’s 12-year name association with the Presidency) would be fully backed by his party. Instead, George Bush saw minor-but-serious competition for the Republican nomination. His most serious challenger was former White House Press Secretary and political pundit Pat Buchanan, who ran strong enough to highlight Bush’s weaknesses but not strong enough to deny him a victory. Also running was Minnesota Governor Harold Stassen and a former Grand Wizard of the Klu Klux Klan, David Duke. The last never got serious popular support but he remained in the race to the end, adding color to Bush’s blandness.

But once into the general election, we saw a larger array of challengers. On the Libertarian ticket****, Andre Marrou stepped in for Libertarian standard bearer Ron Paul. Paul had, in 1992, launched a bid for the Republican nomination and then dropped out and as Paul’s VP pick from 1988, he seemed a fair choice. Special Forces and Vietnam veteran Bo Gritz who, like Perot, was famous for his POW activism, ran on a “God, Guns and Gritz” platform. Lyndon LaRouche ran, as he always seemed to back then, adding further confusion to the “Andre who?” question****. And last, there was Ross Perot who pulled almost 19% of the popular vote, although such support did not earn a single electoral college vote.

Like I said, if I had read this book back then I may have voted differently. Despite whatever Mr. Perot was lacking in the “political stump speech” skill set, I must admit that he did get things done. He also, no doubt, cared deeply about his country, a sentiment that can no longer be taken for granted in the world of politics (or elsewhere?).

In the forward for the book, Follett takes pains to emphasize that On Wings of Eagles is meant to be nonfiction, which is to say not a dramatization or historically-inspired fiction. Yet it is still written in novel format – contrasted, for example, with what I’ve called “journalistic history.” Follett does not cite sources nor restrict himself to contemporary and/or documented quotations. In many cases, he has reconstructed conversations using vague memories and his novelist’s touch but he assures us that he ran all of Eagles conversations past their original participants for accuracy. As to the basic story and timelines, I’d assume these are accurate.

It is a good book, the better for it being a true-to-life tale. It does demonstrate why we should appreciate Perot’s best qualities – his loyalty to his family, friends, employees, and countrymen; his passion; and his refusal to accept that where there is a will, there might not also be a way. These qualities are obviously a big part of what made him such a successful businessman. As an employer, he’s probably not for everyone – but he does seem to be loved by those who chose to work for him and do it his way.

As a president though? I wonder if we’ve finally got to see what happens when an outsider, unused to playing the political game, attempts to “run” the country. There is a world of difference between Ross Perot and Donald Trump but I can now imagine how the “system” of the 80s would have rejected a President Perot in a similar way as the “resistance” to a President Trump.

*He made his pitch using charts and graphs. I’m not sure how many of us were actually using Microsoft PowerPoint already in 1992, it has become twenty years later an “generic” expression for what we might have called a viewgraph or viewfoil talk back then. We liked viewgraph presentations, even if we recognized it as a little too eggheaded for a candidate for U.S. president.

**I had a friend at the time who did a Ross Perot impression, but he pronounced the name PEE-roe. I’m all but certain that Mr. Perot himself did not, but it is nevertheless how I will always remember the name.

***Clinton played his saxophone on the Arsenio Hall Show, for example. Who Hall, who may ask? Trust me, it was a big thing at the time.

****If you care, this is for whom I voted, sparking a whole lot of “Andre who?” comments from my friends, many of whom equated “libertarian” with “LaRouchian” – because both start with an “L,” I suppose. For his part, Marrou’s claim-to-fame is that he was a one-term State Representative from Alaska. He was the third Alaskan, and the third person, to have been elected to a State Legislature purely as a Libertarian (there have been two more since).