"I think you need to have a tax system that basically is flat, fair and simple. And - that you can put on a post card. I mean, even Timothy Geithner could do this one and get it on time"
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The joke lands because it pretends to be about paperwork and is really about power: who gets to define “fair,” who gets to look competent, and who gets to be the punchline. Rick Perry’s postcard-tax line is classic campaign-season populism, packaging a sprawling ideological project as common sense you can hold in your hand. “Flat, fair and simple” is a rhetorical triple-play: flat signals a preference for lower, less progressive taxation; fair borrows the moral high ground without specifying winners and losers; simple flatters voters as the grown-ups in a room full of technocrats.
The Geithner swipe is the knife twist. In 2011-2012, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was dogged by a tax-payment controversy, so Perry frames complexity as not just annoying but corrupting: the system is so byzantine even the nation’s top finance official can’t navigate it “on time.” That’s less a policy argument than a character argument - a way to delegitimize the Obama administration as both elitist and inept.
It’s also a neat inversion of expertise. Geithner, the credentialed insider, becomes the cautionary tale; the “postcard” becomes a symbol of democratic accessibility, as if smaller forms guarantee cleaner governance. The subtext is that resentment can be a governing philosophy: simplify the tax code, yes, but also simplify the story - ordinary people versus bureaucrats - and you win the room before anyone asks what a flat tax actually does to their bill.
The Geithner swipe is the knife twist. In 2011-2012, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was dogged by a tax-payment controversy, so Perry frames complexity as not just annoying but corrupting: the system is so byzantine even the nation’s top finance official can’t navigate it “on time.” That’s less a policy argument than a character argument - a way to delegitimize the Obama administration as both elitist and inept.
It’s also a neat inversion of expertise. Geithner, the credentialed insider, becomes the cautionary tale; the “postcard” becomes a symbol of democratic accessibility, as if smaller forms guarantee cleaner governance. The subtext is that resentment can be a governing philosophy: simplify the tax code, yes, but also simplify the story - ordinary people versus bureaucrats - and you win the room before anyone asks what a flat tax actually does to their bill.
Quote Details
| Topic | Money |
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