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Orson Swindle, who spent more than six years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, sits down with Roth in October 1993 to discuss national politics, Hawaii's political climate, and his advocacy work with Empower America. Swindle describes captivity marked by isolation, near-starvation, and periodic torture, and says the experience deepened his commitment to civic engagement. He held senior posts under Reagan — assistant secretary of Commerce, state director of the Farmers Home Administration in Georgia — before coordinating Ross Perot's Hawaii campaign and rising to national prominence. He says Perot's mid-campaign withdrawal in July 1992 was driven by private family concerns, not the stated strategic reasons. Swindle argues that Empower America, co-founded with Jack Kemp, Bill Bennett, and others, seeks to revive the Reagan-era coalition around limited government and individual empowerment, in contrast to what he portrays as the Clinton administration's preference for expanding government. He is sharply critical of Hawaii's forty-year Democratic dominance, calling the state's congressional delegation ineffective and singling out Senator Inouye's pork-barrel spending as an example. Swindle says he might run for office and warns that without political change, Hawaii will be unable to retain its young people.
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