THE RISE AND FALL OF CANDIDATE PEROT - THE OUTSIDER VERSUS THE POLITICAL-SYSTEM .2.

This article uses Ross Perot's campaign for president in 1992 as a cas e study in how two key political institutions-the conventional politic al press and the party system-mediate the effects of political communi cation. Reporters allocated positive and negative coverage to Perot ac cording to the same rules that they normally follow, and voters were a s responsive to this coverage as they were to media coverage of two ea rlier ''outsider'' candidates for president, Jimmy Carter and Gary Har t. Part I of this article, which appeared in the previous issue of Pol itical Communication, dealt with the earliest, relatively unmediated p hase of Perot's campaign and the takeoff phase of the mediated campaig n. Part II deals with the remainder of the campaign, including the gen eral election.