Gerald Posner take on some similarities between Donald Trump and Ross Perot

Even colleagues and friends forget sometimes that I wrote a biography on Ross Perot (Citizen Perot: His Life and Times) that was published when he ran for president in 1996. Trisha Posner and I spent considerable time interviewing Perot in Dallas, and I thought the book was an evenhanded bio, even though it covered both the good and bad of his life.

The NY Times review - titled "Ross Perot Will Not Like This Book" - concluded: "Mr. Posner, who started researching this book when most of the press had lost interest in Mr. Perot, has performed a useful public service with this expose. Anybody who is thinking of voting for the charismatic Texas billionaire ought to read it."

In the past month, I've been talking to several national correspondents about the similarities and differences between outsiders like Perot and this year in Trump. Kevin Diaz, the Houston Chronicle's political reporter, has written a good overview for his paper, "The Echoes of Perot in Trump's Improbable Rise." It's the…