Now he wants to put himself into sharper focus. Prompted by his sons—who say Perot all but ignored their father after enticing him into the campaign—Stockdale, 72, has broken a four-year silence to discuss with PEOPLE his cameo in national politics. "This chapter has had a very minor impact on me," insists the war hero, who still works part-time as a philosophy scholar at Stanford University's Hoover Institution. "I don't want to spend the rest of my life trying to justify a bad performance." But if Stock-dale would just as soon forget his role in the Perot campaign, sons Jim II, 45, an elementary school principal outside of Pittsburgh; Sidney, 42, a history teacher in Pebble Beach, Calif.; Stan, 38, dean of students at a Minnesota prep school; and Taylor, 34, a prep school administrator in Claremont, Calif., refuse to let their father walk away without his reputation's being restored. All his father needs, says Jim II, is a chance to answer those fundamental questions: Who is he, and why was he running for Vice President?
Stockdale's brief political career began in March 1992 when he got a surprise call at his Palo Alto, Calif., condominium from Ross Perot, who was about to launch his presidential bid. Years earlier, when Stockdale was being held captive in a Vietnamese prison camp, Perot had tried to send food and medical supplies to him and his fellow POWs. So when Perot asked the retired vice admiral if he could use his name as a temporary placeholder on state ballots that required candidates to list a running mate, Stockdale agreed. "I was helping out a friend," he says.
When Perot dropped out of the race in July, Stockdale assumed his brush with politics was over. But 10 weeks later the Texan called again. He was getting back into the race, Perot explained, and he wanted Stockdale to serve as a full-fledged running mate. Actually, Perot had no other choice: The deadline for putting names on the ballot had passed. "Ross couldn't have run if I hadn't agreed to go with him," says Stockdale.
The next morning, Stockdale and his wife, Sybil, 71, flew to Dallas, joining Perot for his reentry press conference. From there, Perot jetted off, leaving his freshly anointed running mate to return to Stanford—and the hot glare of the national media—alone. Jim II informed his father he would be debating Gore and Quayle after he saw Perot announce it on TV. Knowing his father was more familiar with the philosophies of the ancient Greeks than the politics of modern America, Jim II flew to Palo Alto to help him bone up. But the enterprise was doomed. "Picture a 41-year-old school principal with a dinky video camera coaching his dad for a vice presidential debate," he says. "It was amateur hour."
Not that Stockdale has ever shied from a fight. The Abingdon, Ill.-born son of a pottery manager and a drama teacher graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1946 and served in Korea and Vietnam. Shot down by the North Vietnamese in 1965, he spent the next 7½ years in a Hanoi prison camp, where he earned the Congressional Medal of Honor for organizing the prison resistance movement despite constant torture. His knee and shoulder mutilated by his captors, his ears dulled by years of jet roar, Stockdale took comfort in the anti-victim beliefs of the Stoic philosopher Epictetus, whose works he had first read in a Stanford graduate school program during the early '60s. Now Stockdale views his endurance as his greatest achievement. "That's when I had to be strong," he says.
Stockdale's mental toughness also came in handy after the vice presidential debate. Ridiculed by comedians for his halting delivery, dismissed by editorialists for his lack of preparation, the candidate resumed his academic campaign without any condolences from Perot during a brief post-debate call. "Stockdale was thrown into a very difficult situation," recalls Orson Swindle, Perot's '92 spokesman and one of Stockdale's fellow inmates in Vietnam. "Jim was not being filled in at all, and he should not have been put in that position."
These days, Stockdale is back on familiar ground, dividing his time between his home in Coronado, Calif., and a condo near Stanford, where he studies, teaches and writes about Epictetus. Perot spokeswoman Sharon Holman says her boss "has the highest regard for Admiral Stockdale," and the admiral remains charitable toward the billionaire. "I would never say Ross wouldn't make a good President," says Stockdale. But as he ends a beach walk near San Diego and climbs gingerly into his Honda sedan, a bumper sticker speaks volumes about his days running with Ross. It reads simply: Dole-Kemp.
PETER CARLIN
KEN BAKER in Coronado
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