Maybe it's talk of a massive recall of Toyota vehicles that brings back memories of independent presidential candidate H. Ross Perot, who finally got Americans to focus on the national debt during the 1990s before they completely forgot again during the early 2000s.

The current Tea Party movement, with its rabid focus on government spending, is another reminder of the diminutive billionaire Perot, who garnered such wide popularity in 1992 he warranted a place on stage during the presidential debates. With his home-spun Texas manner, Mr. Perot became famous while promising down-to-earth, practical approaches to the economy and the mounting debt -- at one point offering to roll up his sleeves and "get under the hood" to fix it.

The result, we now know, was a Tea Party-like backlash against both big spending Republicans and Democrats and desertions to Mr. Perot's reform banner in two presidential elections. It likely led to President George H.W. Bush's defeat for re-election in 1992.

Those Perotistas provided the independent candidate with 18.9 percent of the vote, compared to 43 for Democrat Bill Clinton and 37.5 for President Bush. While his percentage fell off in 1996, he still garnered a respectable 8.4 percent as a third party candidate.

But it was the Perot emphasis on using practical means to control federal deficits and the overall debt that probably sparked the most interest nationwide. After the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress

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under future House Speaker Newt Gingrich and others, who ran on a promise of lowering government spending, President Clinton and Republicans in Congress came together out of political necessity and agreed to a pay-as-you-go guideline for future spending.

Coupled with a rising high-tech economy, the deficit was eliminated by the late 1990s and the debt started to come down.

It is interesting that the similar PAYGO legislation, which U.S. Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vermont, originally sponsored, has just passed Congress and is on President Obama's desk.

Now, if both sides in the deadlock that is politics today inside the Washington beltway can agree to a combination of spending cuts -- not only in social programs but in the bloated military as well -- and to some temporary tax increases in targeted areas, we might begin to dig ourselves out of what was a preventable mess.

If nothing happens and Tea Party activists and others enraged by the ineptness and deadlock mentality in Washington unite behind third party candidates, make no mistake -- some political heads will roll. One already has, its seems, in Massachusetts.

And Republicans shouldn't get too comfortable thinking those disaffected voters are solidly with them because they favor less government spending. After all, remember the fate of the first President Bush.

The overriding concern of millions of voters, in fact, might be in eliminating incompetent or gutless government at all levels.