He used to be a thing. The self-made billionaire ran for president in 1992 and 1996. As a disruptive third-party candidate for president, Perot ran on a platform of fiscal responsibility and protectionism. He won nearly 19% of the vote in the 1992 race — by far the biggest slice of the electorate for a third-party candidate since Theodore Roosevelt’s Bull Moose Party in the 1912 election.