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If you’re in the mood to curl up and read a Moby-Dick-sized take on Gov. Rick Perry’s blessedly remote prospects of becoming a serious presidential contender in 2012—and really, who isn’t?—your prayers have been answered. February’s Texas Monthly takes a temporary breather from its stock of Top 10 Lone Star Cliche compilations to bring you nearly every conceivable thought about the subject from house pundit Paul Burka. The notion that Perry has national aspirations isn’t novel. Among many others, yours truly has mentioned it a few times. In fairness, I was speculating about Perry joining his political soulmate, Sarah Palin, as No. 2 on a GOP nightmare ticket in 2012. Burka ups the ante, laying out a just-barely-plausible scenario in which Perry could take the top spot on the ticket. Making the idea of Perry for President just barely plausible is a strain, for sure—and maybe that’s why it takes Burka so godawful long to do it. As Dr. Johnson said of Paradise Lost, “none ever wished it longer than it is.” So in the event that you want to spare yourself the whole shebang, here’s the Cliffs Notes with a few critical comments: Perry is an underrated politician. True enough. But when Burka tries to prove that Perry is ready for national prime-time by comparing his political skills favorably to Kay Bailey Hutchison’s, he’s surely committing one of the major fallacies. People, nobody in national politics looks bad on the stump compared with Hutchison. Perry does have charisma to burn among his people. I’ve witnessed it at the tea parties and anti-abortion rallies. But when he’s faced with his foes—the media, say, or smarter opponents in a debate—he can be downright lousy. Mike Huckabee, who can sound populist and intelligent when necessary, would crush him in a debate like a flea. And can you picture Perry on Meet the Press? Perry has “exquisite” political timing and can ride the Tea Party wave in 2012. Well, I would not have used the word “exquisite.” I’d lean more toward “desperate.” I think of Perry as the Madonna of Texas politics: so engulfingly frantic to win (as she’s frantic to be famous) that his whole being is focused on doing whatever it’ll take, and sniffing the popular winds accurately enough to do it. He got a timely whiff of anti-Obama frenzy early in 2009 and unquestionably made the most of it, as Burka notes. But he’d have stiff competition for Tea Party votes from Palin and Huckabee, who can’t stop calling them “patriots” and has a weekly FOXNews platform from which to do it.

Perry has a national following—really! Now, this is silly. Perry has made some appearances on FOX, been praised by Matt Drudge and The Wall Street Journal and Rush Limbaugh (and Burka seemingly documents every last instance of this). But he doesn’t register a blip on any GOP preference polls for 2012, and his greatest notoriety—stemming from the tea parties and his anti-stimulus nonsense—has actually come in national liberal circles. I’d be willing to wager that more MSNBC viewers than FOX viewers would recognize him. And Rachel Maddow devotees, I think we can all agree, are not exactly his natural constituency. But I do think there’s a good chance that the Republican nominee in 2012 will emerge from obscurity. Which is where Perry exists on the national scene. Being Texan would help. I think not. The national memory is short indeed, but George W. Bush hasn’t been entirely erased from it. Another right-wing ideologue from the state America loves to hate? I don’t see it, even among Republicans. Burka claims that it matters that Texas’ sheer size might matter, noting that “Texas will send more delegates to the Republican National Convention than any other state, and the more the Republican party dominates a state—legislative and congressional majorities, for example, or voting Republican for president—the more delegates a state gets. Texas qualifies for all the extra delegates that are available.” (You see how he goes on.) But presidential nominees are chosen in primaries, not at nominating conventions. Unless this is 1924 and I’ve gotten lost somehow. He’ll have to beat Bill White first. Here, Burka is spot on: The former Houston mayor is going to be Perry’s first formidable Democratic foe next November, assuming both men make it through their primary challenges as expected. A Perry victory would be the smartest bet, especially if there’s a strong anti-Obama tide. But Perry will have a tussle on his hands—and it’s not the fight he originally expected, against Hutchison. One thing Burka doesn’t mention (which is surprising, since he mentions everything else) is that a Perry victory wouldn’t give him much juice nationally. In a good Republican year across the board, the re-election of a GOP governor in Texas wouldn’t exactly make turn heads. So there: That’s the sum of it, in a fraction of the length. Except for Burka’s final line, which is probably the best of this whole epic exercise in speculative punditry. After outlining the dominoes that would have to fall for Perry to become the 45th president, Burka concludes: “Heaven help us all.” Amen to that.

If anybody ought to know just how cussedly anti-government Texans tend to be, it’s Bill White. Back in the mid-’90s, the former Clinton energy official and future Houston mayor chaired the Texas Democratic Party during its free-fall from monolith to doormat. When White took the helm in 1995, the Democrats were flat on the canvas—woozy from Bush and Rove’s roundhouse curve in ’94, but conceivably poised for a comeback. The Republicans, back then, looked giddily ascendant but also perilously divided between their Barbara Bush/Big Oil wing and the Bible-beating anti-taxers who’d seized the party’s grassroots.

As the Democrats’ chief flack heading into the 1998 statewide match-up, White believed—or made a fine show of believing—that his party could still woo the Barbara Bushies. Texas moderates, he said and said and said again, would come back to the Democrats “once they understand the mainstream Republican Party has been hijacked by extremists.” Better public education, decent health care, fair taxation, reasonable insurance rates—those kinds of issues, White insisted, would surely cut the Democrats’ way.

Perhaps only Karl Rove could have prophesied how wrong White was. The whipping they took in 1998 sent Texas Democrats sailing straight over the ropes and out of the ring, head-over-tail into political purgatory. The “extremists” won everything in sight, starting a run of three consecutive elections (and counting) in which the once-dominant Dems would lose every single statewide contest.

Twelve years later, White’s back for more, stepping up to challenge the undisputed heavyweight champion of Republican extremists, Gov. Rick Perry. White’s message, when he announced his candidacy in November, sounded a whole lot like a spiffed-up version of his wishful patter back in the ’90s. Referring to Perry’s flirtation with secessionism during his star turn at the Tea Parties, White posed this question: “Shouldn’t we be the state that leads the nation, not leaves the nation?”

White will spend much of 2010 flinging the “S” word (for secessionist) at Perry. The governor and his consultant-thugs will counter with a steady barrage of the “L” word (for liberal, in case you didn’t know). But the portion of the alphabet that will almost surely decide the issue—assuming that Perry and White win their primaries as expected in March—will be “G,” for government. White vs. Perry shapes up as the purest test in ages of whether Texas voters can stomach the idea of functional governance.

White’s three triumphant terms at the helm of the state’s biggest city have left no room for doubt that he can run things well. But to win statewide, he has to find a way to sell folks on the wildly radical notion that a competent human being should be in charge of the world’s 15th-largest economy. He’ll have to make his case for competence in a state where gummint-bashing is a sport that rivals football in popularity. And he has to make the sale at a tricky historical moment when even moderate voters tend to process any message that sounds vaguely pro-goverment as an Obama-style ruse for running up big deficits, tossing tax dollars at Wall Street like confetti, and turning America into a socialist state.

If he were matched up against a mainstream conservative—Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, say—White’s odds of beating back the anti-government tide in this anti-government state would be next to nil. But his ace in the hole is Perry, who spent 2009 morphing into a scarily convincing hybrid of Sarah Palin and George Wallace.

With 12 years of urbanization and Latinization having altered the state’s political landscape since 1998, Perry’s act just might—emphasis on might—have outlived its heyday. It’s no coincidence that White only decided to climb into the gubernatorial ring after it began to look like a near-certainty that the governor would pummel Hutchison in the GOP primary. Against a mainstream conservative like Hutchison, any Democrat’s chances would fall somewhere between nonexistent and zilch.

But White is a canny fellow. And whatever his deficits as a retail politician—wonky, boring, big-eared, bald—he offers the sharpest possible contrast with the charismatic whack job in the governor’s office. If enough Texans have wearied of Perry’s neo-Confederate song-and-dance, and if they’re finally ready to elect a certifiably competent governor, the politics of this state just might look—and be—drastically different a year from now.

But those, gentle reader, are some truly Texas-sized “ifs.”

The government will soon require by law that every American purchase health coverage from a private insurance company.

That’s a central element of the health care reform bill that Congress is finalizing. Under the so-called health insurance mandate, we all must either obtain coverage through our employers or buy it ourselves.

I’m not sure many Americans realize just how unprecedented this will be.

I’ve never been thrilled with the idea of the government forcing its citizens to buy a product from a private company.

Here’s what I wrote about the health care mandate back in August:

I’ll start with a question: What items in your life does the government require you to purchase from a private company?I’ll venture a guess at the answer: Nothing.Car insurance, you say? Not really. You’re required to buy it only if you have a car. You still have the choice whether to buy a car. No car, no insurance. Same with home insurance. You’re still choosing to buy a home.In other cases, the government mandates something but provides the means. For instance, you’re required to educate your child, but the government provides a system of free, public schools.Nowhere in our lives does the government mandate that — no matter what — we must buy a product from the private sector.But that may be about to change.

Congress is currently debating a bill that would require all Americans to have health insurance…..If the final bill mandates health insurance but doesn’t offer a public option, it would mark one of the first times the government ever required by law that Americans purchase a product from a private company.

As far as I know, this kind of requirement would be unprecedented in the history of American government. It would be akin to the government deciding that neat lawns and clean public spaces are in society’s interest, so everyone must buy a lawnmower from Walmart or Home Depot.

That may seem like a ludicrous analogy. But in basic terms — if you remove the term “health insurance” from the bill and replace it with “lawnmower” — it’s no different.

The Heritage Foundation, of all places, is making a similar argument. You can read their take here.

They contend the health insurance mandate is unconstitutional. I have no idea whether it’s constitutional. But even if lawmakers legally can do it doesn’t mean they should do it.

Supporters of the mandate argue it’s the only way to ensure that everyone has access to health insurance. They also contend it’s the only way to guard against people gaming the system — forgoing insurance until they get sick and then signing up at the last minute. That scam would be possible if — as the bill also stipulates — insurance companies can’t turn people away due to pre-existing conditions.

I doubt many people would pull that kind of scam. I suspect most Americans want health insurance and most would buy it voluntarily (without the government forcing them to) if insurance premiums were subsidized and more affordable. In fact, President Obama made that very argument last year during his debates with Hillary Clinton. Remember that the main policy disagreement between the two candidates during their primary battle was the health insurance mandate. Obama opposed it.

Not anymore, apparently.

We live in a society based on free choice. The list of requirements the government forces on every citizen is very short: pay taxes and serve in the military (during times of national crisis). That’s it. (If you can think of others, write in the comments section below.)

To that short list, it’s likely we’ll soon add a third item — buying health insurance from a private company.

I certainly admire the goal of insuring more people. But there has to be a better way.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Gov. Perry has a nasty anti-science streak. Yesterday, Perry ripped into the new EPA smog standard, issuing a statement that made several improbable claims. Here is the statement in full, punctuated by my remarks:

“The EPA’s only consistent target has been the target on the backs of Texas workers and taxpayers.

“If this proposal is adopted, it will mark the second time in two years the federal government has imposed drastically reduced standards on states. We’ve worked hard and invested over $1 billion to reach compliance on the original target without sacrificing Texas jobs or economic momentum.

Let’s review the facts. Under the Clean Air Act, the EPA must review the ozone standard every five, taking into account the latest science on smog’s health and environmental effects. Under the terms of a 2001 Supreme Court ruling the EPA can only consider the standard’s impact on public health. Economic factors cannot be considered.

The ozone rule was last changed in 2008 when the Bush EPA lowered the limit from 84 parts per billion to 75 ppb. This move actually outraged public health advocates. The reason why is that a scientific panel advising the Bush EPA had unanimously recommended an ozone limit of 60-70ppb.

This didn’t sit well with the White House and its buddies in polluting industries. As the Washington Post reported in March 2008, Bush himself intervened in the process, effectively stopping the EPA from going with the stricter limit.

The difference between 75 ppb and 65 ppb is not academic. The Bush EPA calucated that the stricter standard would prevent 3,000 to 9,200 premature deaths each year whereas 75 ppb would avoid 1,300 to 3,500 deaths. In other words, 10 ppb could save thousands of lives every year.

The standard that the Obama EPA proposed today is identical to the one suggested by the scientific advisors under the Bush administration.

Back to Perry:

“Since 2000, Texas clean air efforts have helped slash levels of NOx gases, a precursor to ozone, by 46 percent, and overall ozone by 22 percent. We’ve done this during a time of economic prosperity unrivaled in the nation.

Most clean air advocates will tell you that progress has been made despite the state, not because of it. The Houston-Galveston area has made some significant gains but those can be largely attributed to the leadership of Houston-area officials, including (uh-oh) former mayor Bill White, who may be Perry’s gubernatorial opponent in a few months.

The Metroplex, on the other hand, has struggled to meet the current standard, in part, because the TCEQ has refused to adopt the clean-air measures recommended by a diverse group of business interests, environmentalists and government officials in North Texas.

TCEQ, run by three Perry appointees, is widely viewed as an obstructionist agency that runs interference for polluters. One clean air group, Metroplex-based Downwinders at Risk, is urging EPA to remove TCEQ from the process.

Perry again:

“From cap and tax legislation to regulating CO2 to moving ozone targets, the Obama administration seems intent upon following flawed science down a road that will lead to the loss of hundreds of thousands of Texas jobs, while doing nothing more to protect human health.”

Reasonable people can debate the merits of cap-and-trade or a particular ozone standard, but to suggest that reducing smog will do “nothing more to protect human health” is deeply cynical. It flies in the face of well-established facts and plain common sense.

Fact: ground-level ozone exacerbates respiratory problems, especially in children. Ozone can worsen cardiovascular problems, and, yes, kill people prematurely.

Perry provides not one iota of evidence that the science behind the new smog standard is “flawed” or that it will do “nothing” to protect human health.

I asked Matthew Tejada, the executive director of the Galveston-Houston Association for Smog Prevention (GHASP), what he thought of Perry’s statement. Here’s part of his email:

For the Governor to say that there will be no health benefit in cleaning up our ozone problem is about the same as claiming that water won’t freeze at temperatures less than 32 f.

There are two things to consider here with regards to the real impact on Texas.  First – now is the time to accept reality that one day we are going to move away from much of our need of refining and/or burning fossil fuels.  We can debate about exactly how long we can delay that eventuality, but the fact remains that the day will come.

We also cannot deny that most of the rest of the world has made peace with this fact and is moving forward.  Texas, unfortunately, has not.  So we spend all of our time and energy desperately trying to protect the jobs of the past instead of making sure we build and protect the jobs of the future.  This will serve Texas very poorly over the long term.

Second, this newer, lower ozone standard will hopefully finally start to bring into the sharp focus the real cost of our dirty ways in terms of health and life.  When you start looking nationwide at the cost in dollars and the cost in years and lives of continuing to burn fossil fuels, it drastically realigns our understanding of “cheap” coal and oil and “expensive” wind and solar.

Give Paul Burka, the Texas Monthly political blogger, credit for one thing: The man sure knows how to fire up a comment thread.

Yesterday, Burka ridiculed the Lone Star Project for claiming “Texas Democrats have filed their strongest slate of candidates in years.” As one commenter noted, you’d hardly expect a pro-Democratic PAC to say otherwise, even if the party were running a bunch of armadillos and yellow dogs—and certainly they couldn’t be expected, as Burka suggested, to say “nothing” about the very candidates they’re pushing. But Burka offered no quarter: “I know it’s nonsense, and everybody who reads it knows it’s nonsense,” he snarled. (See my different view here.)

If poking fun at Texas Democrats’ rare burst of optimism wasn’t enough to get those comments rolling in, Burka leapt into the thread with some similarly pointed comments about President Obama. Burka pronounced Obama’s year-old presidency ineffective, and then elaborated thusly:

“Democratic members are retiring everywhere you look, Obama’s legislative program is in shambles, the Republican party is resurgent, he waits several days before commenting on the attempt to blow up the plane. I don’t think we should be surprised by this. He ran on “hope” and “change” and he has no experience of working on major issues. He wasn’t ready to be president. I’m not a big Hillary fan, but she would have been ready to be president from day one. Obama wasn’t.”

Lordy, lordy: Where to begin? With a comparison to the presidential “readiness” of an Arkansas governor in 1993, perhaps, or a Texas governor in 2001? With the fact that Burka, who predicted Obama would lose, still can’t get Hillary’s “from day one” campaign line out of his head?

No, too easy. To borrow his term, the most “ridiculous” part of Burka’s blast at Obama is that business about waiting “several days before commenting on the attempt to blow up the plane.” Maybe Obama should have spoken sooner. But this was an attempt, thank God, not a horrifically successful act of terror. And Obama’s ultimate response (“a screw-up that could have been disastrous”) was thoughtful, tough and bracingly honest—just the kind of thing people elected him for. Even Clark Kent Irvin, a former Bush homeland-security official, called the president’s reaction “spot-on.”

“Paul, this is right out of Fox News,” an anonymous commenter noted on BurkaBlog.

In fact, Burka’s criticism did jibe cozily with the Fox/GOP spinbook. On Dec. 28 on Fox’s Hannity, Karl Rove had this exchange with guest host Tucker Carlson:

“CARLSON: This President was not notified until three hours after this incident became known. Is that a long time? It seems like a long time.”

“ROVE: Look, they woke him up immediately to tell him he won the Nobel Prize but couldn’t bother to interrupt his vacation for three hours to tell him a terrorist tried to bring down a plane on Christmas Day. And the President waits 72 hours before we hear from him, and it’s over 72 hours from the time of the incident to the time that the President spoke today, and then the President said some things that are simply not true.”

(Check out the video here.)

The right-wing repetition machine picked up on the latest Obama-bash and cynically used the 72-hour delay as further evidence of the president’s squishiness when it comes to combatting terrorists.

But the great terror-fighter himself, Rove’s buddy George W., was even slower at Christmastime in 2001 to speak about “shoe-bomber” Richard Reid’s attempt to blow up a jet bound for Miami. It took Rove’s man six days to say anything (and then very little) about Reid’s foiled terror attack—at a time when Americans were far more jittery about terrorism in the wake of 9/11.

a commenter pointed this out, Burka became uncharacteristically restrained and failed to respond. Maybe he didn’t have an answer. Maybe he was embarrassed. Maybe he was momentarily distracted by Glenn Beck. But for someone who started his post by criticizing Democratic spin, this little kerfuffle was mighty ironic to say the least.