Sunday, May 11, 2014

Smart Glasses Won’t Magnify Rick Perry’s Brain

The bespectacled Perry looks like he's squinting at the thermostat to see if he can get his IQ up to room temperature.
                     
Rick “Oops” Perry is back, pitching himself for another presidential run. This time, he’s sporting eyeglasses.

What fun. Who can forget the Texas governor’s nationally televised pratfall during a 2011 presidential debate, when he couldn’t remember the third federal agency he intended to ax?

Well, he later sniffed, “If anybody’s looking for…the smoothest debater, I readily admit I’m not that person.” But Rick, you weren’t “debating.” You were simply trying to recite your own three talking points. One, two…oops!

And the issue isn’t whether you’re smooth, but whether you’re stupid — way too stupid to be president of the United States of America. 

That’s a role in which this Texan would need to match wits, not with such lamebrains as Rick Santorum or Michele Bachmann, but Vladimir Putin.

But wait — there’s a new Rick.

This go-round he’s sporting black-framed, designer eyeglasses, which his makeover consultants insist make him look smarter. Actually, the bespectacled Perry looks like a guy squinting at the thermostat to see if he can get his IQ up to room temperature.

This is the governor who’s been hunkered down for 14 years as the chief executive of the state with the highest percentage of people with no health coverage, the second-highest percentage of children with no health insurance, and numero uno in the nation for women without coverage. Then, when the Affordable Care Act presented the opportunity to provide insurance for millions of Texans, the man in the Mensa eyewear said heck no, we don’t want no government-provided health benefits.

“We?” For his entire 30-year career in political office, Perry and his family have gladly accepted platinum-level health benefits from the government for themselves. I’m guessing that even those $500 glasses he’s wearing were put on the taxpayers’ tab.


OtherWords columnist Jim Hightower is a radio commentator, writer, and public speaker. He’s also editor of the populist newsletter, The Hightower LowdownOtherWords.org