What's Your Question?

Rick Scott is running for governor of Florida.

This is Rick Scott, former chairman and CEO of the Columbia-HCA health care giant, headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee. I lived in Nashville when Mr. Scott and his executive team were under investigation for massive fraud of the Medicare system. Several of his "underlings" were convicted; Mr. Scott -- somehow-- was not.

He is being presented here in Florida as a "millionaire businessman" who really knows his stuff, and wants to bring Florida out of the doldrums with his hardcore Republican vision of "eliminating waste and lowering taxes." Stop me if you've heard this one before.

Interestingly, some heretofore unobtainable video footage of one of his depositions in the Nashville Medicare scandal has surfaced just less than two weeks before the election. I have no idea who found the footage, nor whether they have the "legal" right to show it.

But it is IS quite entertaining to hear this high-powered corporate attorney-- the main man overseeing the largest for-profit hospital enterprise in the world-- purportedly unable to answer questions because he has trouble understanding terms like "market", "predecessor", "occupancy", "process"... and my personal favorite, "corporate hospital law."

(View the video excerpt here.)

When asked if a signature appearing on a document was his, Mr. Scott said, "That looks like my signature, I'm not sure. What's your question?"

Now, I'm all for letting bygones be bygones. But, really now...this man wants to be the governor of the 4th largest state in the Union (just a tad over 18.5 million people) and he has to take the Fifth Amendment 75 times?

I wonder if his first question at the administration of the oath of office would be: "Could you define 'uphold and defend'?"