It is unfathomable that yet another Texas blowhard governor has emerged as a front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination. The persistent appeal of the mythology of Texas as a model for the nation defies the lessons of logic and experience, and yet here we are with Rick Perry, a George W. Bush look-alike, as a prime contender to once again run our nation into the ground.
To begin with, Texas is not and never will be a model for the nation unless the other states discover similarly rich deposits of oil and natural gas that account for one-third of jobs and supply 40 percent of tax revenues within those states. If Texas energy receipts and jobs helped float Gov. Bush's reputation, they have been nothing short of miraculous for Perry's tenure. The price of oil rose from $25 a barrel when Lt. Gov. Perry replaced the newly elected President Bush to $147 in 2008 and has stayed at more than $80 a barrel since, to the dismay of anyone who has to buy gasoline.
In addition, thanks to breakthroughs in oil field technology that Perry had nothing to do with, there have been controversial new drilling techniques that have vastly expanded the exploitation of gas and oil reserves, producing many of the new jobs that the Texas governor claims. For a relatively ineffectual governor, in a state in which the part-time Legislature holds the power, to take credit for this job boom is as ludicrous as a Saudi prince bragging of his entrepreneurial skills as the source of royal wealth.
Unfortunately, the boom in the energy industry has not spread to those in the state stuck in less lucrative sectors of the economy. Texas remains tied with Mississippi for the largest number of workers earning wages equal to or less than the federal minimum wage. This is particularly true for the majority of Texans who are nonwhite and who account for a good portion of the state population increase that Perry brags about. It will be interesting to see how he handles the immigration issue in light of the fact that the manufacturing sector, particularly automobiles, is dependent on robust traffic of parts and workers across the border from Mexico.
It should also be added that much of the non-energy job growth is in the public sector, which has been in part financed by the federal government that Perry lambastes. As the Austin American-Statesman newspaper points out: "... [A]lmost half of the state's job growth the past two years was led by education, health care and government, the sectors of the economy that will now take a hit as federal stimulus money runs out and the state's 8% cut in state spending translates into thousands of layoffs among state workers and teachers in the coming months."
There is, however, something very important in the Texas experience that could serve as a model for the nation, and that is the state's success in avoiding the worst effects of the housing crash. Texas has not suffered anything like the crushing foreclosure crisis that is the main source of joblessness in states from Florida to California. But Perry surely will not dwell on the reasons for Texas having escaped that fate, because his mantra of less government regulation doesn't work in this instance. If lax environmental and zoning codes were the secret, neighboring Arizona and Nevada would not be the housing basket cases that they are. The difference for Texas is one that most free-market conservatives ignore: It was precisely the tight government regulation of the housing market that spared Texas a similar fate.
From the first days of statehood in 1845, Texas has maintained the strictest laws on home mortgages in the nation. The Texas constitution's blanket ban on home equity loans, born of outrage over previous land grabs by banks, has been eased substantially over the years, but a firm commitment that the total amount in loans on a house not exceed 80 percent of appraised value, and other consumer-friendly restrictions on mortgage lenders, saved Texas from the home mortgage disaster visited upon many other states.
That put a crimp in the wild lending that fed the securitization of home mortgages that still proves to be so toxic to the nation's economic recovery outside Texas. As a bit of irony, it was U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, who pioneered the passage of federal legislation preventing government oversight of those mortgage-backed securities. Perhaps because Texas homeowners were better protected than those in the rest of the nation, the Texan Bush managed to be splendidly indifferent during his presidency to the dire consequence of the housing bubble.
Indeed, how can Perry seek the presidency largely on the basis of his Texas governorship without conceding that it is his Texas predecessor, himself purely a product of Texas state government, who is far more responsible for the economic meltdown than the current president?
Barack Obama "inherited a mess," economist Nouriel Roubini -- made famous by his 2005 prediction of the economic collapses, which Bush ignored -- told The Wall Street Journal, adding, "We're lucky that this Great Recession is not turning into another Great Depression." In case his point was missed, Roubini reminded of the obvious: "We destroyed our fiscal sustainability before [President Obama] came to power. ... We had guns and butter and low taxes. It doesn't work, if you want guns and butter, you should have high taxes during wars."
Bush, as Perry is doing, complained about big government in every area except lavish spending on the military-industrial complex, an important part of the Texas economy at more than $200 billion a year, double what it was a decade ago. But that's all the hypocrisy we have time for in one column.
Michael B. Keegan: Rick Perry: Uniting the Really Far Right and the Really, Really Far Right
Anthony Jerrod: Why Rick Perry's Moratorium Proposal for the EPA Is a Bad Idea
But Texas, the state is really a great place and everyone should go there and see for themselves. There is something for everybody there.
It's always someone overcompensating that does that.
Beyond that, Perry is basically running for the base of the GOP, and yes, the claims about Texas are easily debunked to an educated audience that knows how to look beyond impressions, review what the pundits are claiming, and read statistics objectively for themselves. I challenge voters to do that anyway, and we should be educating students to know how to do that.
However, the strategy may work; it's a jingoistic brass band playing, "I'm better than you" and "if you're not with us, you're against us" and that certainly plays to the exclusionary, insecure mentality of conservatives these days. These are people who practically stroke out with disagreed with and whose sense of self-respect is eradicated under the pressure of their need to overcompensate. I find it personally distasteful, and I don't see how even a somewhat intelligent person can support Perry, unless, of course, they see career or economic gain in it. I find that reason venal, since I tend to predicate my presidential support on what is good for the nation in the long term.
In any case, Perry, moreso than Bachmann or Palin, will have me volunteering for the Obama campaign. I wanted to sit out of it, but Perry managed to come off as rather offensive. Romney isn't such a bad thing if he wins, and I don't think there'd be much change from Obama, but with Perry swaggering around and 'hoo dang'ing his way into power, we'd be at war with Iran in three months from his inauguration. That sort of dense, 2.0 GPA aggie fratboy mentality in the white house is what got us into the mess we're in to begin with, and while Obama has a lot of explaining to do, or decisions to make between now and re-election, I'd rather take his second, undistinguished term over a Perry presidency. Heck, I'd volunteer for Romney to prevent that.
Dump on the president all you want, but Romney would be just as disastrous as Perry.
I donated, volunteered and did my level best to get Obama in office, I'm entitled to criticism and I am tired of apparatchiks presuming to scold me for doing so. Just because the Republicans are mindless and ruled by their rhetoric, checklists, loyalty oaths, flag pins and other shibboleths and proof that they are 'Real Americans' or "True Conservatives" (or is it true Americans and real conservatives? I always get confused about the slogan of the day emanating from their radios, because I use my radio for music) doesn't mean that Democrats need to.
I sort of understand that you are clearly thinking we need to be as lockstep and mindless, as orderly and disciplined as the Republicans, which means ceding our liberal thinking and our ability to objectively analyze and make decisions independently. I feel that far from a disadvantage, it is an advantage we fail to capitalize on as we allow the slogans by the simpeltons to dominate the dialogue. You, of course, would have us made into simpeltons in the mold of the originals; in short, you'd have us betray the essence of liberalism from John Stuart Mill on.
So while I'm sure you think you're doing good, I shall persist with my criticism and support of Obama; it is an unfortunate facet of modern American society that the Bush "With us or against us" mentality percolated down to Democrats like you, who insist it's impossible to do both. I consider it responsible to do both.
Good luck with imposing orthodoxy on the party, though. Hopefully, you'll get clued into what the end result of Republicanizing the Democratic party will buy us before it's too late and too far along.
But to be honest, the more he opens his mouth, the more he reveals himself, the more people will turn away. The bush wound is still too raw and prevalent to ignore the similarities.
"If God wanted Texans to ski, He would've made BS white!"
Does anyone really believe a Chicago politician is better than a Texas politician?
Finally, "Bush, as Perry is doing, complained about big government in every area except lavish spending on the military-industrial complex, an important part of the Texas economy at more than $200 billion a year, double what it was a decade ago. But that's all the hypocrisy we have time for in one column."
I sure see Clinton and Leon puling about cutting back budgets. I guess they didn't get the memo.