Perot's Number Two

By David Seideman

WHEN ROSS PEROT INTRODUCED HIS VICE-PRESIdential candidate last week, he called him a "hero's hero" and "a man of steel." James Stockdale, 68, a highly decorated former Navy fighter pilot and POW, fits those descriptions. But it remains to be seen whether the retired vice admiral is too prickly and independent to weather the give-and-take of a presidential campaign any more gracefully than Perot.

A native of Abingdon, Illinois, and a 1946 graduate of Annapolis, Stockdale was one of the most celebrated POWs of the Vietnam War. Captured in 1965 when he parachuted from his crippled A-4 jet, he spent nearly eight years at the camp known as the Hanoi Hilton. He endured regular torture sessions, and was often kept in leg irons and solitary confinement. At one point he severely bruised and cut himself so his captors would not dare parade him in front of their propaganda cameras. Stockdale, who still limps from his wartime injuries, was awarded the Medal of Honor and 26 combat decorations. His wife Sybil first persuaded Perot to take up the POW/MIA cause, thus paving the way for his close friendship with her husband.

A conservative intellectual who quoted the Stoic philosopher Epictetus to the press last week ("A life not put to the test is not worth living"), Stockdale has spent most of his post-Vietnam career in a succession of academic and think-tank jobs. He has taught at the Naval War College and Stanford University, and was president at the Citadel. Since 1981 he has been a fellow of the Hoover Institution, an independent conservative research center that is located on the Stanford campus. Stockdale also served on the board of the ultra-right-wing Rockford Institute in Rockford, Illinois, from 1989 to 1991 and contributed to its monthly periodical, Chronicles, at a time when the organization came under fire from other conservatives for being "insensitive" to anti-Semitism. Stockdale's articles, however, dwelled on his own Vietnam experience.

Stockdale's only previous involvement in presidential politics was running Ronald Reagan's California campaign in 1980, a service that merited the lifelong Republican an honorary post in the Administration overseeing White House fellowships. In the current race, he is likely to play the "outside" man, stumping in the hinterlands while Perot concentrates on television appearances. But Stockdale, who is intensely private and introspective, may not prove adept at the traditional hand-pumping and baby-kissing role.

Throughout his career, he has exhibited a stubborn unwillingness to compromise his principles. He quit after his first year at the Citadel because of disagreements with the school's board over reforms he sought, including an end to freshman hazing. Stockdale went on to teach ethics at Stanford, but the university eliminated his course after only one year. Stockdale claimed that he was dropped because of his affiliation with the controversial Hoover Institution, a charge Stanford officials denied. No one, however, takes issue with Stockdale's frank self-description: "I am not an organization man."

With reporting by Julie Johnson/Washington and Richard Woodbury/Dallas