Tag Archives: Perry

Texas Means More to the Nation Than to Texans

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Though I like to believe I think broadly and that I have strived to shed provincialisms, I am a Texan by birth, and I am heart-broken at the beating my home state is taking and has taken since George W.  Bush became President under suspect circumstances in 2000.

It is hard for people, perhaps, to understand what Texas means to Texans.  But more so than in sheer nativist or parochial loyalty, my sentiment for the state is rooted in the view that it is essential to the future of the country.  So my feelings are more than resentments about how the national press is making a joke out of Texas through the lens of the national political stage.  If Texas fails as a state – which it might well do if its growing HispanicLatino population does not accelerate its economic and social standing – the country will fail.  Think California, which remains on the ropes and whose educational system – meaning its future – has cracked.  California schools no longer are the foundation from which the state blasted into the future and took the world – not just the country – with it.  Continue reading →

From W to Newt: Downward, Ever Downward

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I remember watching George W. Bush on television at one of his first group meetings with foreign leaders.  It was a NATO summit meeting of European leaders in Brussels six months after he took office.  As the leaders gathered for the traditional group picture, they stood around the nervous President of the United States, who at one point looked up and behind him to laugh at something one of the leaders had said.  In that split second, Bush looked like a lost schoolboy, out of his element.  I will never forget the thought I had then.

This country is rich – rich enough to squander the Presidency.

Any country that would elect a neophyte and a person so lacking in intellectual depth was presumptuously wealthy enough to risk the Presidency on someone whom I was convinced would be a disaster.  I had only a clue from someone who knew him how much of a debacle was at stake.  Now we all know.  The same thought came to me as I watch the spectacle of today’s Republican presidential candidates.

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