Ross Perot captured America's imagination and we are better for it

(AP) Ross Perot's legendary list of lifetime achievements should start with "captured the imagination."

Brilliant in business, generous and demanding, driven, quirky and colorful, Perot was as hard to pigeonhole as a Texas tornado.

His death early Tuesday at age 89 leaves a broad legacy and some of the nation's enduring one-liners born of homespun wisdom. A bestselling book and televised miniseries dramatized his adventure to rescue employees being held in Iran — using his own hired commandos, no less. But no single volume or TV show could capture the full sweep of the diminutive giant.