Oops, you did it again, Texas

Wednesday night, for 53 painful seconds during the CNBC debate of GOP presidential hopefuls, when trying to list the three government agencies he wanted to eliminate, Rick Perry just couldn’t remember. As Los Angeles Times reporters Michael A. Memoli and Mark Z. Barabak put it in their lead sentence, "It was a night to forget -- literally."

Perry, elected Lt. Governor of Texas in 1998, assumed the governorship in December 2000 when then-governor George W. Bush resigned to become President of the United States.

The state of Texas needs to produce for the national spotlight more thought-provoking politicians with better oratory devices. 

Rewind to a different century. Texas did have an incredibly capable politician with profound communication skills, but in 1996, she passed a few weeks shy of her 60^th birthday. Twenty years before she died, Barbara Jordan, the first African-American woman to serve in the Congress from a Southern state, addressed the Democratic National Convention in 1976. No brain freeze, there.

Here are some wonderful Barbara Jordan quotes:

"A spirit of harmony can only survive if each of us remembers, when bitterness and self-interest seem to prevail, that we share a common destiny."

"This country can ill afford to continue to function using less than half of its human resources, brain power, and kinetic energy."

- Keynote Address, Democratic National Convention, July 12, 1976

"My faith in the Constitution is whole, it is complete, it is total and I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution.... It is reason and not passion which must guide our deliberations, guide our debate, and guide our decision."

- Testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, July 25, 1974

"What the people want is simple. They want an America as good as its promise."

- Harvard University Commencement Address, June 16, 1977

"Justice of right is always to take precedence over might."

"The imperative is to define what is right and do it."

- Remarks at "The Great Society: A Twenty Year Critique," a symposium sponsored by the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs, April 1985

"If the society today allows wrongs to go unchallenged, the impression is created that those wrongs have the approval of the majority."

"The majority of the American people still believe that every single individual in this country is entitled to just as much respect, just as much dignity, as every other individual."

- Remarks at "The Johnson Years: LBJ: The Differences He Made," a symposium sponsored by the University of Texas at Austin and the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, May 3-5, 1990

"American's mission was and still is to take diversity and mold it into a cohesive and coherent whole that would espouse virtues and values essential to the maintenance of civil order. There is nothing easy about that mission. But it is not mission impossible."

- Outstanding HISD Alumna Award Recipient, October, Annual Meeting of the Council of the Great City Schools, 1993

"Fairness is an across-the-board requirement for all our interactions with each other."

- Remarks at the Huntington Library in San Marino, California in conjunction with a special exhibit, "The Last Best Hope of Earth: Abraham Lincoln and the Promise of America," quoted in the Los Angeles Times, December 15, 1993

"I have faith in young people because I know the strongest emotions which prevail are those of love and caring and belief and tolerance."

- Article in On Campus, February 14, 1994

"How do we create a harmonious society out of so many kinds of people? The key is tolerance -- the one value that is indispensable in creating community."

"One thing is clear to me: We, as human beings, must be willing to accept people who are different from ourselves."

- Article entitled "All Together Now" from Sesame Street Parents, July/August, 1994