A flash in the Texas Panhandle

It's possible that Rick Perry is just too dumb to win the Presidency. That's an odd sentence to write, because I'm talking about the Presidency of the United States here, not President of the National Academy of Sciences or President of the local chapter of the Rotary Club. You know, a position where some measure of intelligence is actually expected, or the norm. Yet, despite my sentimental attachment to the Perry campaign, the weird basis of which I have described on prior occasions, I'm reaching the conclusion (not reluctantly) that this hayseed is just too dumb even for America. Those who have called Perry "Bush without the brains" are on the right track.

Although I never actually thought Bush was unintelligent, despite occasional bleatings to the contrary. Bush's IQ was definitely higher than the controlling mean for the Washington press corps, for example, and by "controlling mean" I refer to that baseline average of insight and complexity which sets the standard for national reporting. Individual reporters are more intelligent than this average, but they have to dumb it down in order to maintain a job and an audience. Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post was an excellent example of this limiting factor. But Bush's ability to humiliate and bamboozle the press, in general, on a constant basis was actually fairly impressive. As the signal example of Bush's skill, I always think of the Valerie Plame matter. Somehow or other, in ways I can't quite fathom, Bush seemed to convince the moronic Washington press corps that he was an innocent bystander to the "outing" of Valerie Plame as a CIA operative, even though he talked daily to people, such as Dick Cheney and Scooter Libby and Karl Rove, who were involved in the matter up to their eyeballs. Bush claimed at the outset that he would "conduct a search" for the people responsible for Plame's blown cover; you know, those people who sat in his Oval Office every day of his Presidency. And yet the Washington press never figured that out, even though Representative Henry Waxman conducted a hearing where Bush's "White House security team" admitted that they were never even asked to open a file on the source of the leak. Why would Bush "search" when Cheney had already told him? That was a master stroke by the Old Bushter, to pull off that caper unscathed, and bespeaks a fairly crafty intelligence. Along with an absolute, complete contempt for the media people he fooled with his lies and evasions.

Perry, on the other hand, has sustained the one wound which is mortal for national candidates: people, including the press, are already laughing at him. This didn't really happen to Bush until after the Katrina fiasco and his "heckuva job" comment to the incompetent idiot he'd placed in charge of FEMA. (Katrina, in this additional sense, was surely an Act of God.) Once everyone started laughing at Bush, his power began to wane, which is why Bush rushed to pass the Military Commissions Act in 2006, with its blanket exoneration of all crimes of war and against humanity which he and his henchmen had committed (that was the actual purpose of the rush job in Fall, 2006, of course; unless I missed something, I don't believe that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the Gurgling Confessor, has been placed on trial yet [5 years later] in Cuba, although that was the ostensible reason for the hurry, and not the impending seating of a Democratic-controlled House in January, 2007). You know, that's actually another instance of Bush being much, much smarter than the Washington press corps - he pulled off that Military Commissions statute, unconstitutional though it was, without anyone noticing his true motivation, which to me was as plain as the Space Needle would be if suddenly moved to Death Valley.

By way of contrast, the C+ student from Texas A&M just looks more and more out to lunch with each one of these painful, embarrassing Republican debates. He can't explain his "ideas," such as they are, with any clarity whatsoever. He's utterly lost trying to think in public. The coup de grace may have been delivered last night by "Saturday Night Live," where Alec Baldwin played a clueless, stumblebum Perry in a debate to oafish, moronic perfection. Even the Washington press corps would wonder how we could have fallen so low if this guy got elected. So I think they're going to cut Ol' Rick off at the pass and stop his run for the White House.

That's actually a pretty good litmus test: when a candidate is too dumb for the media in this country, you know we've got a real lamebrain on our hands.

Rick Perry, Straight Talker

Okay, it's about trying to create another word bite the Rick Perry Campaign website might find while trolling and raise the Swimmer's visibility a notch. You must understand that what appears, at first glance, like unprincipled bipartisanship really serves a deeper purpose, that of constructive anarchy. I think the USA has crossed a kind of national Event Horizon and is not going to "reform" itself into anything useful for the well-being of mankind; therefore, the ethical approach must be to support developments in America which tend to bring about radical transformation through unconventional methods (not "revolution by force," mind you - no sedition here, or "treason" of the kind that nogoodnik Bernanke might resort to). I cannot think of a more effective way to bring about radical transformation than the election of Rick Perry, noted outspoken Secessionist, as President of the United States.

Thus, to return to the "Bernanke as traitor" meme, first trotted out by Good Ol' Boy Rick a few days ago while charming the corn farmers of Iowa: Rick said, in his usual direct, semi-rational way, that if "that guy" prints any more money before the election that Rick didn't know what they would do in Iowa, but down in Texas they would treat him "pretty ugly," because printing money like that is tantamount to "treason." Now, Rick didn't say "tantamount," because a C+ student from Texas A&M doesn't use ten-dollar words like that. It isn't manly, or necessarily within his syntactical reach. Anyway, on the East and West Coasts, the liberal Nerd-O-Meters started flashing red and the usual academic economists weighed in, leaping to the defense of their fellow academic economist nerd Bernanke. Paul Krugman, always the first in line in any politically correct parade, sniffed that "aside from the ignorance of monetary policy," blah blah blah.

Okay, Perry People, let me set up the lift. I'll even mark it off with quotations to make it easier:

"But Perry was right - Bernanke is printing money through quantitative easing. Krugman, disingenuous as always, is engaging in academic sophistry. In his customary way of pulling the wool over the eyes of his gullible and adoring readership, Krugman is drawing a distinction between the Fed's 'crediting the reserve accounts' of Primary Dealers who sell Treasury bonds back to the Fed in POMO operations, thus increasing the Fed's balance sheet and the monetary base of the dollar, and simply printing money. But the act of adding to the 'reserve accounts' in exchange for Treasury bonds which the Primary Dealers paid actual money for is the creation of wealth out of thin air, as Krugman well knows, and is tantamount [note to Perry Campaign: use Google dictionary function] to 'printing money.' You can't fool a straight-talking, eminently sensible, down-to-earth Texan with such sleight of hand, Perfessor Krugman."

Maybe that can help Perry, and help my underlying cause, the election of a secessionist to the White House (I'm not sure that one has ever happened before). Perry also made some news with his idea of using "Predator drones" along the Tex-Mex boundary (and Southern border generally). He went on to add that he was talking about aiding law enforcement (and the military, which he also wants to use) in "surveillance." He wasn't talking about using Predator drones to blow up illegal immigrants or Mexican drug cartels. (Was he?) Well, I'm not sure. The main use of Predator drones currently is to blow up Aghani wedding parties, as far as I can tell, which must be the festive occasions where the Taliban, or al-Qaeda (what's the difference, they're all Muslims), plan their attacks.

In both of the above examples, the Wily Rick is really operating at two levels. 'Twas said the Bard of Avon simultaneously wrote at four levels, but Shakespeare did not have the benefit of an education at Texas A&M, where simplification was the order of the day. With the Bernanke "threat," Perry is creating distance between himself and Obama/Wall Street/Federal Reserve. The latter troika, of course, is dedicated to preserving the financial oligarchy of the banks and Big Money, and the Tea Party dimly appreciates this conspiracy at their expense. Quantitative easing is a way to pump the stock market while holding down interest rates to, well, zero, thus making sure that old people with savings accounts can't make a dime on their nest eggs (hey, Gramps, just go head-to-head with the High Frequency Trading computers located two nanoseconds from the stock exchange servers -- no guts, no glory!) So Rick is heading that one off at the pass, by telegraphing that Bernanke may face a posse in Fort Worth if he tries that trick again.

With the Predator drone remark, Rick is again having it both ways. If you want to think this former Air Force Captain is advocating blowing up coyotes and their illegals as they approach the border, or blasting away at the gun-drug trade down in "Murder City" (Laredo), then have at it. Ol' Rick ain't gonna stop you. Plus, it gives Rick a chance to draw a nice distinction between himself and the oh-so-careful O Man, who, as noted, has opened his first attacks on the Defense of Marriage Act in areas around Kandahar.

Rick is full of Texas bluster, that's for sure. He scares the crap out of liberals for that very reason. I remain fairly sanguine about the whole thing, however; it's all working out according to plan. Michele (Deer in the Headlights) Bachmann is not going to last very long, even with the adoration of Chris Matthews and other dirty old men. It will come down to Mitt versus Rick Perry at the end of this interminable process of maneuvering, since the media have decided that Ron Paul (who finished in a virtual dead heat with Bachmann in Iowa) has ideas that threaten the cozy power sharing of the military-political-media complex. Paul represents the "reform" path, which doesn't work anymore. Not enough drama. But a Cowboy versus a guy wearing Magic Underwear - that might play on cable. And thus, the die is cast, and the cast is picked.