It seems that the Perot presidential campaign was a money
speculation, or, more accurately, a bond speculation.  You see, before
the campaign Perot owned a couple billion dollars worth of bonds.  He
spent 65 million on the campaign, but his bonds appreciated by 12%, or
around 200 million, due to falling long-term interest rates.  Why did
interest rates go down?  Because he made the deficit reduction the
point of his campaign, and turned it into a significant political
issue.

  Remember the Clinton stimulus plan involving tens of billions of
dollars of public work projects?  Somewhere along the line it got
turned into the $500 billion deficit reduction plan.

  But the interesting question is, how did Perot get the mass media to
take him seriously?  Every election year there's a number of
unconventional presidential candidates and they get ignored.  The
answer -- by buying Ted Turner and Larry King.  If not with actual
dollars, then with ratings.

  Perot announced his candidacy on the Larry King show.  CNN news
reported it as a significant political event.  The rest of the media
followed.  During the following months, Perot appeared over and over
again on the Larry King show: every time CNN reported the 'news' it
had created, and every time the rest of the media followed.  The free
publicity for the Larry King show drove up ratings, to the point where
the main party's candidates appeared on his show (producing even
higher ratings and large gobs of free publicity).

                            :)