SIX HETEROSEXUAL MEN Named to Cabinet. Drug Testing Mandated Every Morning For Federal Employees. Sideburns Eliminated From the Executive Office Building.

For the first time in American history, a fascist becomes president.

This is what happens in the best-case scenario for the Ross Perot campaign, and as he leads several national polls (including in pivotal states like California and Texas), the idea of a half-businessman, half-general, never-held-public-office-before president seems not so farfetched.

The problem with Perot goes beyond his lack of political experience and his authoritarian tendencies. The question is more fundamental: What exactly does he stand for? And once in office, could we control what he would do?

Perot has long maintained that position papers and seven-point plans are insignificant, and many voters seem to agree. Indeed, writers in such publications as The Washington Monthly have suggested that silver-bullet, Clinton-style specifics may somehow reveal a lack of real substance.

But hard-headedness and supposed courage does not make for substance either. And voting for a strong leader like Perot without any sense of where he would take the country could mean a roller-coaster ride without a place to get off.

IF THERE'S ONE THING that H. Ross Perot is, he's master salesman. From his days as a sales prodigy at IBM to his legendary sale of a school reform plan to the Texas legislature, Perot has built his reputation on using a combination of pressure, money and "commonsense" persuasion to make the hard sell.

Don't get me wrong. Anyone who expects to be an effective president needs to be a persuasive vendor in the marketplace of ideas. And this quality would make Perot--or any candidate who can mobilize support for ideas and actions--a policy-making force to be reckoned with.

But for all his sales feats, Perot is currently pulling off his best job yet--the creation and selling of his own image. Perot as the populist. Perot as the ultimate democrat. Perot as the maverick outsider. Perot as the candidate unsullied by the dirty hands of government. Considering the facts of Perot's career, it's been a masterful sell.

According to Perot and his supporters, the political world is a mess. Gridlock and stagnation rule the day. The only people with voices are the special interests represented by the Washington lobbyists who are corrupting our glorious democratic system. Perot is the White Knight--ready to ride in from his outsider, above-the-fray, private-sector perch and purify democracy.

But a look at Perot's history, as reported in the media in recent weeks, reveals shrewd use of the corrupt system about which he complains.

Perot owes his meteoric rise of the past months to the backbone of politics since 1960: TV. Eschewing usual campaign techniques, Perot has taken his candidacy directly to the people via the studios of Larry King.

But Perot has always known that television was a key ingredient to political success. During the Nixon years, Perot offered to buy a television station and newspaper to help spread the magic of the Nixon message.

Such dealings with government taught Perot something else: When you want to get something done, hire a high-priced lobbyist. Preferably one who held a high government office. Indeed, that was how Perot pushed his school reform package through the Texas legislature. According to Thomas Toch's In the Name of Excellence, Perot brought in one of the state's most powerful lawyers, along with three of the most expensive lobbyists in Austin, known around the capital as "the $100,000 boys." Two of them were former assistants to the speaker of the Texas House of Representatives.

Even his business ventures, contrary to public perception, have been heavily dependent on government. His mutlibillion dollar company, Electronic Data Systems, became a corporate monster by acquiring large government contracts to computerize government records.