Rick Perry's more Texan than George W. Bush

Rick Perry's more Texan than George W. Bush: And that's why he's a 2012 force to be reckoned with

Erica Grieder
New York Daily News
Sunday, August 21, 2011

Two years ago - two months ago, even - if anyone suggested that Americans would consider a Christian conservative Republican governor of Texas for President, they would have been laughed at, if not scolded for bringing up painful memories. After eight years under George W. Bush, who wants more?

Yet on Aug. 13, Rick Perry, Bush's successor in Austin, announced that he is "all the way in" the race. The latest Rasmussen poll shows he has upended the Republican field, polling at 29% with Mitt Romney substantially back at 18% and Michele Bachmann at 12%.

This appalls people who, knowing little about Perry, know enough about Bush to jump to conclusions.

But those eager to put Perry on a "W: Part 2" movie poster are in for disappointment. I've covered the governor for more than four years from my base here in the state capital. I've interviewed him, covered appearances across Texas, talked to his friends and foes. In terms of personality, political approach and policy, Perry is his own man - for better and for worse. He's a fiery federalist who runs to the right, rather than a compassionate conservative who campaigns, at least, toward the center.

So, here's a primer on the man you're going to hear more about as the primaries approach. He'll be a formidable candidate, more because of the ways he differs from Bush than for some of the things they have in common.

He's self-made. Though Perry was lieutenant governor to Bush's governor, his political career actually predates Bush's. He has held office in Texas for more than a quarter of a century. That gives him a different network of loyalists and supporters - and a different cast of critics.

He's shrewd. When you're looking at a guy who's never lost an election, and rarely had a close one, you have to wonder why he might be charmed. It's not just luck. Perry has an instinct for what he needs to do to win. He approaches campaigns with a wolfish gleam.

Interestingly, he doesn't do more than it takes to win. In past elections, we haven't seen him trying to build a bigger tent, or professing an interest in bipartisan behavior. That may not be necessary in Texas; the national landscape, of course, is different.

He's an optimist. On the stump, Perry naturally exudes a sort of Reaganesque sunniness that you can almost feel candidates like Mitt Romney reaching to manufacture. He doesn't tell people to have hope; he tells them to get going. He speaks of voters being "frustrated" rather than embattled. At 61, he still relishes a challenge, and as his rivals for the nomination circle around him, he'll greet them with indomitable self-confidence.

He's been successful. Rivals will drag every piece of Perry's record to the light, and there is plenty worth exposing. But no one can argue he's all hat and no cattle. More than a decade of governing a huge state has given him lots of talking points too. As his campaign keeps mentioning, since June 2009, 40% of America's net new jobs have been created in Texas. Last week Paul Krugman tried to reduce that "Texas miracle" to the status of myth - but while we can question how much credit Perry deserves for the employment explosion, the data aren't debatable.

He's conservative. Really. Bush rose to prominence as a kind of right-wing Bill Clinton, a political triangulator who would build the base and reshape the Republican brand via "compassionate conservativism." His presidency brought an expansive new federal education law, No Child Left Behind, as well as a costly new prescription drug benefit under Medicare.

Perry has explicitly rejected this path. As governor, for the most part, he has met budget shortfalls with cuts. He is a staunch critic of federal programs such as No Child Left Behind, on the grounds that they are intrusive.

In his 2010 book "Fed Up!" he was explicit: "The branding of compassionate conservatism meant that the GOP was sending the wrong signal that conservatism alone wasn't sufficient or, worse yet, was somehow flawed and had to be rebranded."

To be sure, Perry has backed down when the public demands it. He railed against stimulus money, for example, but he accepted it. Another case concerns his 2007 order mandating that girls receive a vaccine against HPV, a virus that causes cervical cancer. That angered both left and right, and the legislature overturned the order. Last weekend, Perry explained that he hadn't done his research. "One of the things I do pride myself on, I listen," he added.

This is the man America is getting to know. Perry's potential to capture the Republican imagination says a lot about his talents. But it says even more about how the GOP itself has changed in the past 10 years - from a party rebranding itself to build on Bill Clinton's domestic policy successes to one that's rejecting not only the last few years under President Obama, but the eight years of Republican rule prior.

Grieder is the southwest correspondent for The Economist.