Former Admiral James Stockdale, wherever you are, you’re finally off the hook.
You may recall that, back in 1992, while he was Ross Perot’s running mate, Stockdale got up at a vice-presidential debate and asked the crowd, “Who am I? Why am I here?” Stockdale was old, and he had been beaten half to death as a POW in Vietnam. Rick Perry cannot avail himself of either excuse for what was a singular moment of utter vacancy in the middle of last night’s Free Market hootenanny in which he said he was going to abolish three federal agencies and could only come up with two. (Ron Paul’s going to be able to come up with nine, six weeks after he’s dead.) Someone, please, someone who loves this man more than I do, get him out of this race before the rest of his marbles just go rolling down the aisle.
Up until that point, when Perry’s campaign sank into the swamp wherein lie the bones of a thousand misbegotten candidacies before his, this particular exercise was remarkable only for two things. The first was the fact that, for the very first time, the assembled candidates determined that the debate would be fought out largely on the basic issue that everybody who doesn’t agree with them, or who has somehow inconvenienced them in the past or present, or who may inconvenience them in the future, or who fails to see what they see in the apotheosis of the blessed market should be treated with the kind of contempt you reserve for the hotel housekeeper when she under-mints you at turndown time. This debate was going to be conducted in the basic language of Republican dickheadedness. Straight, no chaser.
He runs through all the candidates, so go read the whole thing.
The other striking thing about the debate was the complete, balls-out, stigmatic, religiously euphoric, seeing-the-Virgin-go-past-on-a-go-kart veneration of The Market. (A minor deity, The States, also came in for some ritual prostration, too, as though local legislatures aren’t the most singularly venal places on earth not involving latex jumpsuits and a donkey.) Let The Market work its magic and the budget will be in balance, unemployment will sink, personal income will rise, the housing crisis will abate, health care will be cheaper and more plentiful, and all the people will have houses and all the students will be able to afford college. I am not paraphrasing here. I am merely condensing two hours of magical thinking into a single sentence. The solution to every problem — every damn one of them — was to rely on The Market for a solution. It was like watching one of those Star Trek episodes where entire societies grow up serving a computer that the people took for a god. To listen to two hours of this was to fall into a kind of cargo cult, insulated in the mountains of some remote country far from here, where everybody sits around all day and looks at a radio, expecting it to speak, and nobody knows how to turn the damn thing on. [emphasis mine]
I’m beginning to wonder why any of them is running for President since they don’t believe government serves a purpose. Seriously, these are the best and the brightest of the Republican Party? Perry comes across as a stoner – forgetful and giggling. Cain emphasizes his respect for women by calling Nancy Pelosi “Princess Nancy.” Gingrich is a “historian” who merely offered advice to his firm while taking money from the dreaded Freddie Mac. (Keep in mind Newt is what passes for an intellectual in the GOP.) And Mitt keeps up his I care for the middle class because they are me stance.
Every single one of them is an embarrassment.