Rick Perry: stupid is as stupid does

In case you haven’t been following the current Intervents over the past few days, let me call your attention to a Rick Perry campaign ad that was posted to YouTube on Tuesday. It’s called Strong, and it features a confident and concerned Rick Perry, bringing a very important point to his voters. Copying the copy from Governor Perry’s YouTube page:

I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a Christian, but you don’t need to be in the pew every Sunday to know there’s something wrong in this country when gays can serve openly in the military but our kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school.

As President, I’ll end Obama’s war on religion. And I’ll fight against liberal attacks on our religious heritage. Faith made America strong. It can make her strong again.

I’m Rick Perry and I approve this message.

As I look at it now, it has 2,711,916 views, 10,401 likes, and 428,954 dislikes (as you might expect, comments are disabled). The numbers are increasing all the time, of course, but the dislikes are doing so very rapidly, making it, as one blogger notes, the most hated video on YouTube. It has well surpassed that horrid Friday, Friday thing, which only has 256,752 dislikes, and has taken almost three months to accumulate them, not just three days.

There are also, of course, many parodies popping up (I’ll let you have the fun of searching for them), most beginning, I’m not ashamed to admit than I’m an atheist, but some getting rather sillier (I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a dinosaur.?). And many are pointing out that the Gov’s jacket bears a close resemblance to the one Heath Ledger wore in Brokeback Mountain, adding ironic silliness to the mix.

(The dislikes are up to 430,321 now....)

The parodies and the silliness are great fun, but let’s not forget that this is meant to be a serious campaign video by a serious candidate for President of the United States. Mr Perry is waning in the polls; still, he’s not a long shot or a dark horse. He was the front-runner for a while. (Have I worn out the horse-racing metaphors yet?)

Where on Earth does he come up with the idea that there’s some sort of war on religion going on, when the religious asshats have been strangling the rest of us for years? One would have to be completely in a land of fantasy to think that atheists are running things. The notion that our kids can’t openly celebrate Christmas or pray in school is just ridiculous on its face, and any quick look around us will easily expose that as the lie it is.

What’s more, few of us would even want to stop kids from doing those things on their own. What we want is not to have public schools and other public, tax-funded institutions promote religion and prayer. No one’s closing down private schools and churches, and no one’s telling kids they can’t say a personal prayer or wish Merry Christmas to their friends.

And the idea that President Obama, a professed church-going Christian, is leading such a war is simply beyond stupid.

432,542.

I want to move to a country where you have to take an intelligence test to get in, even on a tourist visa.

Don’t make promises...

It’s that time again: U.S. presidential elections are in a bit more than a year, so, of course, furious campaigning has started. The religious-fanatic morons are telling us how God is guiding them, but they’re just insane. Rick Perry, after officially praying for rain, is promising to end abortion while his state burns from the endless drought.

On the more sane side, yesterday I heard Mitt Romney on the radio, promising to eliminate taxes on investments for the middle class.

Of course, it was the same in the lead-in to the 2008 election, as it’s the same every time. Then, all the candidates, including the current president, promised to do this or that with tax reform, to create their version of health-care coverage, and so on.

Here’s the thing: they are all making promises they can’t keep. None of this is up to them.

Congress controls the budget. Congress levies taxes, and is responsible for any changes to the tax system. It took legislation to enact the health-care bill, which looked little like what Mr Obama (or anyone else) had promised solemnly and fervently.

That’s how our system of checks and balances, our tripartite government, works. The president can do certain things with executive orders. He can make appointments according to his own plans. He can call on executive agencies to do rule-making magic in support of his policies. He can limit Congress with vetos. But it’s the legislative branch that controls much of what the executive candidates like to promise. And even for the other things, the legislature can make laws that negate or forbid executive orders, can refuse to confirm appointees, and can override vetos. And it’s they who give the executive agencies their rulemaking authority in the first place, and they can change its scope or take it away. All overseen by the judiciary, of course, which will rule on disputes and can be predictable or full of surprises.

George Pataki was elected governor of New York in 1994, largely on his promise to restore the death penalty in the state. When he took office in January, he did just that... and the state’s highest court promptly declared the current death-penalty law to be unconstitutional. The State Assembly refused to address it with new legislation, and Mr Pataki’s campaign promise amounted to nothing.

To the extent that we believe campaign promises at all, we need to take them with large grains of salt, and consider whether the things the candidates are promising would actually be within their purview when they take office. If not, they can try to influence things, but the legislative and judicial branches are not often easy to steer.

It seems the songs we’re singing
Are all about tomorrow,
Tunes of promises you can’t keep.
Every moment bringing
The love I can only borrow,
You’re telling me lies in your sleep.

Do you think I’m not aware of what you’re saying,
Or why you’re saying it?
Is it hard to keep me where you want me staying?
Don’t go on betraying it.
Don’t make promises you can’t keep.

— Tim Hardin, Don’t Make Promises (1966)