Incumbent Texas Gov. Rick Perry and his Democrat opponent, former Houston Mayor Bill White, are marooned in a standoff of their own selfish making. Perry’s hubris in demanding that White’s campaign release income tax returns from his tenure as deputy energy secretary in the President Bill Clinton administration from 1993-1995 as a precondition to a scheduled Oct. 19 debate in Austin is an appalling stunt.

Conversely, White’s staunch resistance to comply with Perry’s decree appears suspicious, and invites legitimate questions about the contents of those returns – to Perry’s obvious advantage.

The unwillingness of both campaigns to budge from their stubborn positions is increasingly foreshadowing that the upcoming Texas gubernatorial election will be the first in 20 years to take place without a real debate.

American political campaigns are as formulaic as they are phony. While the lion’s shares of staples are easily disposable to the voting public – baby-kissing, gratuitous photo-ops, ubiquitous media-presence and incessant TV and radio ads – the right of the public to witness debate on neutral ground and tailor their opinions accordingly is not expendable.

Ultimately, Perry alone has the power to retract on his imperious vow and engage White, in the scheduled Oct. 19 debate, as he concocted the “no debate without said records” ultimatum.

Though White could easily concede to Perry’s call for complete transparency via disclosing the records in question, it is not Perry’s place, governor or not, to dictate rules about what the competition must do to be eligible for running for office.

A fact that bears reiterating is that White has released his federally-required personal financial disclosure forms as deputy energy secretary and his tax returns as mayor of Houston.

Insofar as it seemingly wouldn’t be politically wise for White to release the targeted records, Perry is indirectly conveying that confronting his Harvard-educated challenger would weaken Perry’s prospects for re-election, either by virtue of White’s platform, or by a feared inability to come across to undecided voters in a positive light.

If Perry no-shows on Oct. 19, the sponsors may question one candidate for an hour, while a live feed would be made available to TV stations throughout Texas. The result would be a travesty made notable only by the void of Perry’s long shadow.

White’s constituency will watch; Perry’s choir will boycott. As a result, the “swing” voters of Texas will once again get stiffed by the tiresome, self-serving rudiments of politics-as-usual: Perry comes off as a pompous bully dictating terms of political discourse, and White – evidently caught in a no-win situation – exacerbates the insult to the voters by not taking the high-road.

Because of its foundation, history and lore, Texas – more so than any other state – deserves the standoff a debate would deliver for ideological, practical and symbolic reasons.

This charade of a campaign, in which the possibility of even a single debate is highly jeopardized by selfish grandstanding, mostly by Perry, is tantamount to a gunslinger moping in the saloon while his opponent stands at the ready on Main Street because they can’t agree on what type of bullets to use.