The death of Ross Perot, at a time when Americans are thinking about political character, takes from us one of its most remarkable exemplars. He is best known for his two campaigns for the presidency. He failed, but historians may yet conclude that he created the populist template that would be used by, in Donald Trump, another billionaire without political experience to gain the White House.

We ourselves had only a glancing acquaintance with Perot. It was formed in the early 1980s, when we were an editor at the Wall Street Journal and visiting Dallas. It was our practice when going to a city for the first time to invite someone newsworthy to dinner. So we’d sent a note to Perot, asking him if he might join a small group from the Journal and talk about “On Wings of Eagles.”

That was Ken Follet’s non-fiction account of the secret mission Perot had organized to rescue from an Iranian prison two of his employes who, in late 1978, had been arrested during the revolutionary turmoil of Iran. It’s an incredible story. Perot hired one of America’s most famous soldiers, Colonel Arthur “Bull” Simons, to lead the team. Perot himself had flown to Tehran to oversee the operation.

The dinner was an off-the-record evening, but it can be said that Perot gave us a glimpse of what a peppery, engaging, and brilliant figure he was. It caused us later to refrain from ridiculing, or merely underestimating, his presidential campaign — even if, both in 1992 and 1996, we voted for Bill Clinton, in the hope that he would lead the Democrats to the center.

Two things stand out, at least for us, from those campaigns. One is Perot’s choice of his 1992 running mate. Vice Admiral James Stockdale may have been the greatest mortal ever to stand for vice president of America. He had won his Medal of Honor for repeated acts of valor in defying his captors during his long travail as a prisoner of war in Hanoi. Yet the press belittled his choice as Perot’s running mate.

Stockdale was met with laughter when at the vice presidential debate he opened by asking, “Who am I? Why am I here?” We later predicted that generations hence, when the individuals who sneered at those words are forgotten in the dust of history, Americans will know exactly who James Stockdale was and exactly why he was here. It says something about Perot that he sought Stockdale for his foxhole.

A second thing that stands out about Perot’s campaigns is that even though he lost, the sallies tapped the sentiments that fueled the populist challenge to both the Democrats and the Republicans. He “foreshadowed,” as the Washington Post puts it, “the rise of the tea party.” And, we’d add, Perot identified early, and tapped, issues that eventually helped propel President Trump to the White House.

Perot was an early critic of the North American Free Trade Agreement, warning of a “giant sucking sound going south,” as jobs and factories moved to Mexico. He avoided the kind of language about some Mexicans to which Mr. Trump resorted. As an independent, Perot did win in 1992 an average of 20% of the vote in the states that, in Wisconsin, Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, would become famous as the Blue Wall.

We found ourselves appreciating Perot’s patriotism. He once tried to get into Communist North Vietnam two cargo jets filled with food, medicine, and gifts for our GIs held prisoner there. He kept a copy of “The Spirit of ‘76” behind his desk. It may be that his biggest mistake was to run as an independent, rather than as a Republican. In any event, he seems at his death a man before his time.