COLLINS: Private planes are the best perk in politics

Gov. Rick Perry of Texas seems to have spent his entire career as governor aloft on someone else’s dime. Earlier this month in The New York Times, Mike McIntire reported that as governor, Perry had received $1.3 million worth of free flights in private jets from corporate executives and wealthy donors. Some of them involved trips to Washington to lobby on behalf of matters of interest to the plane owners.

This is the same Rick Perry who recently told The San Francisco Chronicle that he was the sort of leader who could go to Washington and “take a wrecking ball, a sledgehammer—whatever it takes to break up the good-old-boy corporate lobbyist mentality that is putting this country’s future in jeopardy.”

On a mission like that, wouldn’t you expect him to fly coach?

Let me tell you just one story about Rick Perry’s hatred of the good-old-boy corporate mentality. There is a hugely rich real estate titan in Texas named Bob (No Relation) Perry who was a very big donor to conservative causes and everything having to do with the Perry gubernatorial career. (No Relation) Perry also had a problem, which was, like all the pressing concerns of extremely wealthy Texans, solely involved with the future development of the state economy and the common good.

(No Relation)’s particular policy-oriented issue was that people were filing lawsuits when they discovered the new homes they had just purchased were full of mold.

Really, it was a big problem. Extremely bad for economic growth. And the governor had a solution. Perhaps he worked it out while lounging, with his feet up, in the leather seats of other people’s corporate jets. In 2003, he pushed for the creation of the Texas Residential Construction Commission to settle the mold disputes, saving everyone a great deal of time and litigation expense.

Gov. Perry then filled said commission with members who were well versed in the issues they would be deciding because of the fact that they were representatives of the housing industry. One of them was (No Relation)’s general counsel.

It is really, really hard to horrify the Texas Legislature, but this thing did, and the lawmakers got rid of it in 2009.

So you can see that Rick Perry is a man of the people. Unless they have mold.

The free plane rides don’t seem to have shattered any Texas ethics laws, most of which are of the foam-rubber persuasion.

And you have to admit: Private jets are the best. When you get to the airport, they’re waiting for you. You can keep your shoes on. Nobody tells you to turn off your Kindle until the plane has reached cruising altitude. It’s the one rich-person perk I truly, desperately envy.

“I envy the single malt scotch as well, but the plane’s right up there,” said Craig McDonald of Texans for Public Justice, an estimable not-for-profit research group that specializes in following the money. Texans for Public Justice has done a couple of reports about Perry’s travel gifts, one of which I fell in love with when I saw the phrase “Flatonia sausage magnate Danny Janecka.”

The whole private jet thing is even more seductive for elected officials than the rest of us because A) politicians always think their time is exceedingly valuable, and B) they tend to be very tall. Long ago, I interviewed Sen. Lowell Weicker (6 feet 6 inches) of Connecticut when he was running for re-election, and I asked him about an opponent’s charge that he always flew first class.

“Look at these legs!” Weicker bellowed, sticking his feet out at me.

And Perry is really, really large. He would actually resemble a superhero were it not for his tendency to break into giggles during a presidential campaign speech.

The free corporate jet thing does have an understandable allure. Plus, you don’t have to check your wrecking ball and sledgehammer.•

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Collins is editor of The New York Times editorial page. Send comments on this column to ibjedit@ibj.com.