The Eternal Optimism of Rick Perry

Rick Perry rides again

It was hard not to stifle a laugh reading this article on the return of Rick Perry to Iowa, where he has regaled audiences with his homespun stories of growing up in Paint Creek, Texas, and bumper yields of corn. Rick is indeed an eternal optimist if he thinks he has a snow ball's chance in hell of getting the Republican nomination. Not so much for his infamous "Oops" moment, as for his trail of petty governance as the chief executive of Texas these past 14 years. He still has an indictment hanging over his head for trying to strong arm Rosemary Lehmberg out of her Travis County District Attorney seat.

Rick has been sporting an expensive pair of Jean LaFont eyeglasses, picked out by his wife, that he seems to think gives him a new vision. They have become the centerpiece of his campaign, which he plans to formally launch June 4 with his announcement in Dallas, Texas. In the meantime, he has been glad-handing folks in Iowa, where he says he will win over voters "one handshake, bear hug and backslap at a time," unencumbered by the duties of his former governorship which he bequeathed to Greg "Wheels" Abbott.

I have to say that one of the nice things about Rick Perry is that he doesn't come across as mean-spirited as some of his rivals, but don't let that fool you. He had been pursuing poor Rosemary for quite some time, determined to run her out of Austin. Rick is one of those good old southern boys who will knock you on your ass, then pick you up and brush you off and say no harm done. This may work well in Texas and the Southern states in general, but it is hard to reconcile the good old Southern boy with that sporty set of eyewear.

Are we to think that Rick has actually studied the issues confronting the country and will honestly try to address them on the campaign trail? He had an opportunity when this silly Jade Helm thing flared up in Texas, but he has since backtracked on his initial criticism of Governor Greg, and is now playing into the same fears on the Glenn Beck Show. He says that if he was President no one would question his motives. For former Governor Rick it is a matter of trust, and he believes he can be trusted, unlike the current man in the White House, which he doesn't even reference by name.

Fortunately, he won't have Ron Paul to call him out on which cabinets he would cut as President. More likely, it will be Ted Cruz sticking his foot in his mouth. Ted wouldn't be where he is if it wasn't for Governor Rick, who gave the Harvard law grad his first state job as Solicitor General. It should be fun to see these two square off against each other, as they will essentially be competing for the same electoral turf.

We'll see how the glad-handing goes but Iowa is no longer much of a factor. Rick Santorum took the state last time around and it didn't seem to put much of a dent in Romney's campaign bus. Governor Rick has to reach well beyond familiar corn fields to have any chance of staying in this race, and even the most optimistic pollster doesn't see much chance of that.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, not...

Team of Rivals Reading Group

''Team of Rivals" is also an America ''coming-of-age" saga. Lincoln, Seward, Chase et al. are sketched as being part of a ''restless generation," born when Founding Fathers occupied the White House and the Louisiana Purchase netted nearly 530 million new acres to be explored. The Western Expansion motto of this burgeoning generation, in fact, was cleverly captured in two lines of Stephen Vincent Benet's verse: ''The stream uncrossed, the promise still untried / The metal sleeping in the mountainside." None of the protagonists in ''Team of Rivals" hailed from the Deep South or Great Plains. _______________________________ From a review by Douglas Brinkley, 2005

The Searchers

You are invited to join us in a discussion of The Searchers , a new book on John Ford's boldest Western, which cast John Wayne against type as the vengeful Ethan Edwards who spends eight years tracking down a notorious Comanche warrior, who had killed his cousins and abducted a 9 year old girl. The film has had its fair share of detractors as well as fans over the years, but is consistently ranked in most critics' Top Ten Greatest Films . Glenn Frankel examines the origins of the story as well as the film itself, breaking his book down into four parts. The first two parts deal with Cynthia Ann Parker and her son Quanah, perhaps the most famous of the 19th century abduction stories. The short third part focuses on the author of the novel, Alan Le May, and how he came to write The Searchers. The final part is about Pappy and the Duke and the making of the film. Frankel noted that Le May researched 60+ abduction stories, fusing them together into a nar...

Dispatches from Vilnius

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