Not too long ago, Rick Perry walked out of the Capitol, stepped up to a microphone and said something that I think pretty well sums up his record in office. He said that government" "cannot dispense hope." This is a country whose government first recognized God's gift of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. This is Texas, a "free and independent state" founded on the "great and essential principles of liberty." Given that, the very idea that a Governor of Texas won't dispense hope concerns me and offends me deeply. In Texas, we must dispense hope. We know there's never enough money to solve every problem, but refusing to take responsibility for dispensing hope betrays a bankrupt spirit.

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Rick Perry leads a government that no longer reflects the ethics and values of the New Mainstream. Rick Perry only listens to divisive, partisan screeching or the gentle cooing of his staffers who cycle on and off the retainers of state contractors. Rick Perry thinks he can afford to ignore the cost that his hopeless ideology passes down to the least of us.

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You want to know how broken the system is? When I was thinking of filing the ethics complaint against Tom DeLay, leaders of my own party tried to get me to back down. They wanted to preserve the so-called ?ethics truce.? Have you ever heard of anything so ridiculous? Only in Washington, D.C. would an ?ethics truce? make sense.

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Most of the nation is learning that political openness is one of the precursors to economic prosperity, yet we have a political system designed to prevent access to all but high-rolling lobbyists and entrenched partisan ideologues. We need to renew our democracy, opening it up to real collaboration, creativity, and cooperation. We need politicians who pay more attention to November's voices than to the partisans of March.

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Rick Perry seems blind to this simple truth. He continues to brag about cutting the budget and not raising taxes on one hand, and he declares an emergency in protecting children from abuse on the other. Forget a Republican primary. Rick Perry needs to debate himself.

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You're either dispensing hope, or you're spreading despair. You're either for opening democracy, or you're defending a closed political ideology.