These days, when someone in a major Texas city wears boots with a business suit, you can be sure he's trying to sell you something. Usually himself.

Lawyers, car salesmen and politicians are the usual suspects of disingenuous boot wearing, usually flaunting some custom-made exotic with little resemblance to the footwear of a working ranch hand.

Sid Miller adds a cowboy hat to the getup.

Texas' latest exercise in political ineptitude, Miller serves (using the term loosely) as the state's agriculture commissioner. That's a formerly highly important position in a farm- and ranch-rich state that has devolved into a stepping stone to higher office.

A conservative in name only (though a Republican Party animal through and through) Miller has led the Ag Commission with an arrogance and pecuniary ignorance most Texas voters associate more with Democrats. To call him politically tone-deaf would be a compliment.

And that was before he found someone reminiscent of Lolita's Humbert Humbert to join the Texas Rural Health Task Force.

According to a story in the April 6 Austin American-Statesman, Miller's 2016 appointee Rick Ray Redalen has lost his license to practice medicine in three states for drug abuse, failure to report malpractice cases and committing perjury in a court case revolving around his marriage to his 15-year-old stepdaughter.

For the past two years, Redalen has pushed adoption of "telemedicine" through the task force. It's surely just coincidence that he runs Quest Global Benefits, a company that provides telemedicine services. Just as it's a coincidence that he donated $17,000 to Miller's campaign.

This story came a bit too late for Texas voters to hold Miller accountable. Miller neatly avoided a runoff for the Republican nomination for Ag Commission in March, taking 55.8 percent of the primary vote.

Given the status of the Democratic Party in Texas -- still tainted by ties to a deeply liberal national party -- Miller should easily be returned to the office he's abused for the past four years.

The same holds for Miller's fellow social media malignancy, Attorney General Ken Paxton, who ran unopposed in the Republican primary this year, despite his own self-aggrandizing media tours and suggestions that parishioners pack heat in the pews each Sunday.

Until Texas voters are willing to look beyond the political party branding mostly set on a national level, we're stuck with a few glitches in the system. Like Miller.

Perhaps we could bring more clarity to Texas ballots if the political party designations were dropped in favor of short descriptions of each candidate. Like "Perennial Candidate," or "Plans Run For Lt. Governor," or "Idiot."

Miller has a wealth of missteps in his term as ag commissioner. He flew to Oklahoma (something that alone should be banned outright) at taxpayer expense in 2016 to get injected with a pain cocktail dubbed the Jesus Shot.

The shot was administered by a doctor who lost his license in Ohio before moving to Oklahoma. Miller has a type.

A jaunt to the Dixie National Rodeo cost $2,000 in state and campaign funds for Miller to win $880 (competing in a rodeo would constitute an appropriate wearing of boots, but not for spending taxpayer money).

Most egregiously -- and least conservatively -- Miller raised fees for things like pesticide applicator certifications, organic certifications, seed certifications and grain storage (you know, things used by the farmers he's supposed to help) by $11 million in 2016, then called for another bump of $5 million the next year. Costs, he said, were hurting the commission.

Miller's appointment of a someone with a revoked medical license to the Rural Health Task Force stemmed from either patronage, ignorance or a total delusion that nobody would care. Those are the obvious choices, anyway.

Redalen had his license jerked in Iowa for lying about knowledge of his stepdaughter's whereabouts, committing perjury. Certainly, that must have been an easy case to make for the prosecutor, as Redalen married the then-15-year-old in Fort Worth at the same time he was lying. The marriage happened a year after the girl's mother committed suicide. And apparently, two years after Redalen struck same mother with a rifle butt and pointed a gun at law enforcement officials.

Texas deserves better than the likes of Miller, though unless we get an upheaval in the 2022 primary (or he manages to get himself ousted from office), he's going to be around for a long time.

Roy Reynolds is a writer in Houston. He wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.

What's your view?

Got an opinion about this issue? Send a letter to the editor, and you just might get published.