In his heart, Dick Lamm has always known what the world is likely to know after the Reform Party convention this weekend: that he could never beat Ross Perot in his own party.

Still, Lamm, a former Democratic governor of Colorado, talks wistfully of rockets. That a mass of unhappy people are just waiting for the right leader, the right cause, the right crisis to ignite a major political force.

“The rocket is there,” Lamm said during his campaign for the Reform Party’s presidential nomination. “If I could just get on and ride it.”

Lamm saw a movement. Instead, the movement turned out to be more about a man, Ross Perot, with enough charisma to have a following and enough money to pay for a campaign. And that isn’t much of a rocket for a third party to ride.

There is little doubt that there is deep discontent throughout the country about politics and government. But the political system is rigged against any third party emerging. And absent a crisis, widespread misery and anger, third parties almost always wither.

“Times are good. There’s no misery index hovering above 20 percent that’s going to convince people that woe betide us, the hour of our doom is drawing near,” said John Anderson, who ran for president as an independent in 1980 and watched his efforts to build the National Unity Party fizzle.

“Building a true third party,” he added, “is almost the task of a generation.”

Third parties rarely are about more, or live beyond, their creators. Witness Teddy Roosevelt’s Bull Moose Party. Henry Wallace, George Wallace and Anderson himself, footnotes all among men who would change the world.

In the history of American politics, all third parties, save one - the Republican Party in the 1800s - have failed. And Lamm knows it.

“The most likely scenario is that I am among the dreamers, the quixotic,” Lamm reflected. “But if nothing else…I’m confident that history will show that I was at least talking about the right issues at the right time.”

Lamm himself says that as long as the Reform Party is seen as Perot’s “vanity party,” its chances of success, much less survival, are limited.

Indeed, polls in recent days have shown Perot’s support sinking below 10 percent, far behind Bill Clinton and Bob Dole.

“If this is only about Ross Perot, there’s a high probability that a train wreck is coming,” warned Scott Rainey, a Reform party official from Oregon.

That’s not to diminish Ross Perot’s role on the political stage.

Neither Democratic nor Republican strategists are discounting the effect that his expected multimillion-dollar infomercial blitz could have on the race this fall. Some Republicans already worry that Perot will train his guns on Bob Dole and the centerpiece of Dole’s campaign, a 15 percent tax cut, as yet another example of “free candy for the voters.”

“The man has $60 million to spend and got 19 percent of the vote last time,” said Clinton aide George Stephanopolous. “He’ll definitely be a factor.”

Four years ago, Perot set the agenda and forced both parties to talk about balancing the budget, reducing the $5 trillion debt and reforming burgeoning entitlement programs like Medicare, Social Security and Medicaid. Perot’s color-coded charts and Sunday school lessons helped the average Joe understand the mire that is the federal budget.

This election, Ross Perot has money, a strong message about fiscal responsibility and government reform and a solid, almost cult-like following.

Perot’s followers insist that after November, they will have a national organization and automatic ballot status in several states. If the Reform Party candidate wins 5 percent of the vote, the party is entitled to federal matching funds as a minor party. If the party wins 25 percent of the vote, the Reform Party will get the same amount of money as both major parties.

Even so, even if the party is about more than just Perot, history suggests that the fate of the Reform Party will likely not be any different from, say, the Prohibition Party, the Peace and Freedom Party, or the Vegetarian Party.

“No one is saying they will go away as a party structure, but what holds them together?” asked Dan Mazmanian, a political scientist at the Claremont Center of Politics and Policy in California who writes about third parties. “In my study of 200 years of election politics, I’ve never seen a coalition of the outs win,” he continued. “The Reform Party people are all unhappy about different things. A party needs something to pull people together.”