Different Strokes
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on September 19th, 2011 4:37 am by HL
Different Strokes
The Washington Post looks at the backgrounds of two frontrunners in the Republican presidential primary — Mitt Romney and Rick Perry — and notes that they “are about as different as possible — in style, substance, biography and their appeals to voters.”
“One was born into a privileged family in a tony Michigan suburb; the other, onto a flat expanse of West Texas dirt with no indoor plumbing. One spent his youth tooling around his father’s car factory; the other, selling Bibles door to door so he could afford to buy a car. One excelled at Harvard University, simultaneously earning law and business degrees and swiftly climbing the corporate ladder; the other, his hope of becoming a veterinarian dashed when he flunked organic chemistry at Texas A&M University, joined the Air Force. Where Mitt Romney is obedient and cautious, Rick Perry is bombastic and spontaneous.”
Obama’s Economic Quagmire
Frank Rich says Ron Suskind’s new book, Confidence Men, often reads like David Halberstam’s Best and the Brightest, “with Summers and Geithner as McNamara and Bundy. But the quagmire isn’t a neo-Vietnam like Afghanistan — it’s the economy, and the casualties are measured in lost jobs.”
So Much for Perry’s Texas Miracle?
The Austin American-Statesman reports that the Texas unemployment rate has reached its highest level since June 1987, at 8.5%. The continued losses are a result of a shrinking public sector, as the private sector continues to create jobs.
While the rate is below the national average, the rising unemployment level in the state could harm Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s (R) efforts to tout his success at job creation in the Republican presidential primary.
