The US Presidential Elections: Ranger Ross rides high in home state: President Bush is heading for a tough fight down Texas way, David Usborne writes from Dallas

WHENEVER George Bush puts in a few days at the Houston hotel that is his supposed main residence, the management unseals packing cases containing a few of his personal pictures and knick-knacks to decorate his suite. The gesture is meant to persuade the President, at least, that Texas is his home.

Few Texans are impressed with the pretence or with the President's other few nods towards the Lone Star State - his occasional rib barbecues and carefully scripted cowboy phrases. Most underwhelmed are the brigades of Ross Perot supporters now threatening to steal the state, perhaps even the country, from Mr Bush in the election.

Mr Perot, by contrast, has his own very permanent collection of artifacts in his Dallas office that speaks rather more convincingly of the qualities Texans appreciate: hard-headed patriotism, an almost mystical dedication to Middle-American values and a pioneering can-do determination.

As the Perot folklore swells along with his popularity ratings, some items have gained national notoriety. Most famous are the Remington bronzes of frontier heroes and Norman Rockwell paintings. By his own admission, these are the icons of an America past from which Mr Perot draws his inspiration for leadership today. His first Rockwell was a calendar print given to him as a boy by his mother. He used to pray before it at night. Lawrence Wright recently wrote in the New York Times: 'One can construe Perot's whole life as an effort to live inside that calendar picture, instead of outside, in an uncertain and imperfect world.'

Whether or not it is a world that is outdated or perhaps never existed, to Americans disgusted with their present situation it is clearly appealing. And Mr Perot is quite definitely for real. Although recent Republican attacks on his investigatorial habits may have slowed his advance, he remains at least in a dead heat with Mr Bush and the Democrat, Bill Clinton, in the polls, and in Texas is a steady few points ahead. His formal declaration as an independent candidate is expected this month.

Jim Oberwetter, the Republican state chairman - recently dismissed in typical barbershop drawl by Mr Perot as a 'bedwetter' - remembers the night in February when Mr Perot first told CNN he would run if volunteers could put him on the ballot in every state.

He dispatched an urgent memo to party headquarters in Washington, warning them to prepare for a serious challenge. 'I told them this was not a drill. But it was much like the warnings on the eve of Pearl Harbor. I'm afraid it took them a while to realise how real this was,' he said this week. He adds - naturally - that Mr Bush will carry Texas, a vital state for winning the election nationally, but not without a struggle. Slipping into Texan bar-talk, he says it will be a 'knock-down, drag-out' fight, but with Mr Perot in the sawdust at the end, not Mr Bush.

Chris Tucker, political editor of Dallas-based D magazine and part-author of a best-selling book on Mr Perot, is open-minded on whether the billionaire pretender will last the course or fizzle like past independent challengers. Most particularly, he senses danger in Mr Perot's continuing failure to get specific on core issues. But he easily sees the attraction.

He retells a piece of Texas mythology about frontier towns asking for help to suppress riots. When the state Rangers responded by promising to send a single Ranger, the townspeople would protest. The blunt reply used to come: 'One riot, one Ranger.' Mr Perot, he says, is that lone Ranger, pledging to right America's ills single-handedly.

It is not surprising that people in Texas should have recognised the potency of a Perot candidacy before Washington and the rest of the country. In this state, and especially this city, Mr Perot has long been a civic giant. Electronic Data Systems (EDS), which he founded in 1963 and sold to General Motors 20 years later, quickly became a vital local employer.

Mr Perot meanwhile fertilised his fame with periodic grand gestures of philanthropy and assistance to friends in need. His rescue of EDS employees from a Tehran jail in 1979 was one mission which did get attention nationwide. Central to his pitch for the presidency is his ability to cast himself as the tycoon who can apply some business horse-sense, and ruthlessness, to solve America's problems.

Thus he is purloining part of the traditional creed of Republicans in Texas, that they are the business people better equipped to govern than the air-head Democrats.

At the On the Border bar in North Dallas there are plenty of executives used to voting Republican now flirting with the Perot ticket. Craig Hughes, an accountant, is one. 'You get the feeling that the bureaucracy is running the country on its own and maybe we need a bull-headed president to make a difference.'

Across town, drinkers at the White Rock Yacht Club are roughly in agreement. In spite of the name, this is more a luncheon-meat kind of a place where the usual armwear is tattoos rather than admiral's braid. A barman, Kevin Denbraven, is ready to vote Perot: 'He's our best bet, for sure.' Do the stories of investigating foes worry him? 'Nope. Not at all.'

According to Mr Oberwetter, great plans are being laid to bring Mr Bush to Texas for long stretches in the final lap of the campaign. His main task will be to show himself as much a Texan as Mr Perot. He has some cards to play. In the ultimate patriotic act, he led the country to victory, albeit now a blurred one, in the Gulf war. He is also a good six inches taller and he can tell bawdy jokes better than the prudish Mr Perot.

But unless he can demonstrate some more genuine Texan roots - purchasing the Southfork ranch might do - it will still be a tough number to pull off.

(Photograph omitted)