Buddy Roemer For President?

Like the rest of the nation, I hadn't really given Buddy Roemer much consideration for in his "run" for President.  But based on Rod Dreher's post, I took a look at Conor Friedersdorf's interview with Mr. Roemer.  Here's a sample:

In five years I've built a bank that is two-thirds or three-quarters of a billion dollars in size. Very profitable. Clean. Didn't foreclose on a single mortgage. Didn't put a single small business under, I'm really proud of that, of the way we honored a long tradition of banking. But I watched banking reform. And I guess that was the straw that broke my reluctant back. I watched banking reform where too big to fail did not disappear. Where Glass-Steagall was not reintroduced. I had gone to Washington in 1998 and 1999 to testify against the elimination of the Franklin Roosevelt Glass-Steagall bill that separated investment banks from banks. I thought they would become too big. Too greedy. Too risk-taking. And I said in 1999 that it will lead to an economic collapse.

I was laughed at.

Then I saw bank reform after the collapse didn't contain Glass-Steagall. It didn't eliminate too big to fail. It didn't increase capital ratios for banks. And then within a month of signing the bill President Obama went to Wall Street, had a fundraiser at $35,800 a ticket sponsored by Goldman Sachs. Well you know, I'm not a Rhodes Scholar. I'm not a rocket scientist. I'm a proud and practical man.

But I call it corruption.

What is most refreshing about Roemer's interview is that he doesn't make this an Obama is the worst person in the world case, like the other Republicans.  He points out that most of the corruption he personally knows about is in the Republican Party.  Buddy Roemer is making some very important points, and this conversation needs to be brought to the fore.  He may have no shot at winning the Presidency, but his view of bipartisan corruption, and his Republican standing, arguing in favor of Glass-Steagall, and financial regulation in general, is significant.  The other Republicans are arguing against Dodd-Frank, not because they want better regulations, which are necessary, but because they want little or no regulation, which would be even more disastrous than what we have been through already.  We need to eliminate the shadow banking system, and bring all financial transactions under some regulation.  Instead, we get a worse system than we had.  We need to have a national conversation about the financial system and governmental corruption, and we need to start it now.