Ross Perot is having trouble getting into the presidential debates, so he's taking his message to the airwaves--and it includes some interesting ideas about how he would manage the federal bureaucracy.
According to a report in The Washington Post, Perot is running a series of infomercials in which he uses a prism as a prop to illustrate his approach to solving the knotty problems facing the country.
"I call this a problem-solving prism and it will apply to every complex problem the government faces, Perot says in one advertisement. "I've chosen the shape of a prism because when the light hits it, the prism separates the beam into its component parts. You can see what makes up the light just as you can see the steps needed to solve any complex problem, and the light is improved and made better after passing through the prism."
The prism problem-solving approach is apparently a hands-on one. Perot told the American Legion convention this month that as president he would ask each patient who entered a hospital run by the Department of Veterans Affairs to fill out an evaluation form and once a month he would personally review the ratings of every hospital.
"I think that will get their attention," Perot said. "Particularly when they heard from me over the phone."
Such an approach, though, would leave Perot with little time for running the other departments and agencies. VA spokesman Jim Holley told the Post that the VA's 171 hospitals served 2.9 million patients last year.
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