The first crack in Ross Perot’s previously impervious image appeared over the weekend when it was revealed that he once considered buying the Microsoft Corp for a few million dollars – and according to the Seattle Times, still kicks himself over the lost billion-dollar opportunity: in 1979 Perot, then head of Electronic Data Systems Corp, met with Microsoft chairman Bill Gates to discuss the possibility of buying the $2m company; at 36 Gates, who owns about one third of Microsoft’s stock, is more than twice as wealthy as Perot; Perot said he had thought Gates’s asking price was too high, but while Middle America is thoroughly in tune with his controversial views on homosexuals and adulterers in high office, it is less willing to forgive fallibility in the serious business of building up a fortune.
