What does he expect them to be fans of? Here the demand side of public discontent is as important as the supply side of billionaire ego. Leaning on reality-TV stardom won on The Apprentice over the past seven years, he is summoning Americans to a very different kind of followership than Perot did, addressing them not as citizens but as fans. The guys in Washington work for us.' Trump's appeal is more about Trump than it is about America. On the Larry King Live appearance where he first hinted at a run, he said: 'The first thing I'd like for you to do, all of you, is look in the mirror … We own this place. Say what you will about Perot, his focus was on the American people. Where Perot believed America's problems could be solved by 'looking under the hood' of the economy, Trump promises to tell those who take advantage of America, from Chinese currency manipulators to Arabian oil cartelists, 'Fellows, you've had your fun.' (Trump gave $50,000 to Rahm Emanuel's campaign for Chicago mayor, which ended just weeks ago.) Both are stubbornly vague. Both candidates, as businessmen, had ties to the establishment that they now diagnose as corrupt. There are stylistic similarities between the Perot and Trump campaigns. 'Ten million dollars for yard signs?' Perot asked. Germond and Jules Witcover's history of the campaign, consultant Ed Rollins recalls asking for a national budget for yard signs. Like many a rich man before him, Perot met his downfall by deluding himself that what was special about him was something other than his money. (Say, Jay-Z at $450 million.) There are comedians worth more. Today there are rappers worth more than that. In 1996, when publisher Steve Forbes ran for president, his wealth-$430 million-caused jaws to drop. Trump, with a fortune estimated at $2.4 billion to $2.7 billion, is merely the 153rd-richest American, and the roll of potentially self-financing candidates is longer than that. Today there are more American billionaires than one can even fit on a list 400 names long. There were 71 billionaires on the Forbes 400 list when Perot declared, and Perot was among the very richest-he had been one of 13 billionaires on the original list in 1982. The difference between then and now is that the plutocratic universe has expanded enormously. Despite an erratic performance, Perot led the whole field for a while and ended up beating Bush in Maine, winning a quarter of the votes in Massachusetts, and taking a fifth of them in the country as a whole. Perot had mulled running for years, possibly in tandem with Chrysler executive Lee Iacocca, as Iacocca later revealed. The psychology of independent candidacies is much the same as when the data mogul H. Logic and megalomania counsel the same course. Other billionaires, like Trump, run for president. Bill Gates does it through charity and lobbying. Diversifying one's portfolio to include clout as well as money makes sense. The truth is not universally enough acknowledged that a man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of political influence. Trump's candidacy comes from a sociological fact-the steady rise of plutocracy over the last quarter century-as well as a public sentiment. For that, it is just as important to look at the supply side. Such demand-side sentiments can explain a lot-but not why certain members of the public might wish to be governed by a billionaire yahoo. People are 'fed up'! There is an 'anti-incumbent sentiment' in the air! They assume the impetus always comes from the demand side. They are credulous when it comes to explaining populist movements. Journalists are vigilant defenders of truth when the subject is President Obama's birthplace or OPEC prices. Of the things Donald Trump has said since he began hinting at a presidential candidacy, the one that most requires challenging is his assertion that people keep asking him to run.

Trump plutocracy