This is the same Rick Perry who recently told The San Francisco Chronicle that he was the sort of leader who could go to Washington and “take a wrecking ball, a sledgehammer — whatever it takes to break up the good-old-boy corporate lobbyist mentality that is putting this country’s future in jeopardy. NY Times, November 5, 2011
As the Republican primaries begin more and more to resemble a Marx Brothers Movie (think of “Duck Soup”), the absolutely in your face, we don’t give a damn about even giving the appearance of integrity attitude of most of the candidates is absolutely astonishing. The above quote is from an article on Perry’s obsessive use of corporate private jets to travel around the country attending sporting events, dinners, and meetings, without even hiding the fact that he is being lavishly funded by the very “good old boys” who corrupt our political process.
He’s not even really very coy or sly about it. It’s as if they don’t really believe that, behind all the fury of the Tea Party and the Occupy Wall Street movements, there is anything real about public disapproval of the government.
The other astonishing thing– which isn’t so astonishing the closer you look at it– is that no politician has come along to take advantage of the fury American voters now feel towards their leaders. Where is the Jimmy Carter of 2011? You would think that all you would need right now if for some plain-spoken young idealist to come along and refuse the corporate jets, the lavish donations, the idiotic slogans, the American flag pin, and just waltz right through the primaries to become the next President of the United States. But the Republicans think that a “plain-speaking” lobbyist who travels on corporate jets and gropes female employees qualifies.
Not so astonishing, really. The system is so rigged in favor or money and the money is completely controlled by corporate interests– even Obama took a lot of money from rich donors– that it may well be impossible for a Jimmy Carter to succeed today.
Besides, it looked like Obama was that kind of candidate, but he has proven, over and over again, that he is unwilling or unable to stand up to the same corrosive forces when applied to a sitting president. Like any other sitting president, his time in office seems primarily calibrated towards raising money to run for a second term. And I would guess that the intelligence and military communities have succeeded in convincing him that any tinkering with Guantanamo and any reduction in military or homeland security spending will leave him vulnerable to attack by the right for not being tough enough on evil, no matter what he believes about how effective or counter-productive any particular measures might be.