Rick Perry Has Three Strikes Against Him

„To many outsiders, especially those who live on the coasts, Perry is just another scary Texas right-winger who talks too much about the Lord Jesus Christ and all the things he learned reading the Bible, who publicly questions evolution and even the validity of Barack Obama’s birth certificate (an issue he has lately backtracked on). The pens of eastern columnists fairly drip with condescension when they stoop to writing about him—not that they understand much more than that he grew up in the middle of nowhere and was a hotshot yell leader (the male cheerleaders who lead boisterous crowds at bonfires and athletic contests) at Texas A&M. If Perry was known outside Texas before the last year, it was as the candidate Karl Rove groomed—and dropped—to take on George W. Bush.

And while all that may be true, it took more than an evangelical bent and zealous conservatism for Perry to rise in Texas politics. Watching his alternately pugnacious and eerily invisible performances during the fall’s Republican debates, it was easy to forget that, as even his detractors acknowledge, he has always been extraordinarily well liked, ready with a big smile, a firm handshake, excellent manners, and a strong clap on the back—social niceties many Texans value highly. As a Texan myself, I’ve always thought that Perry was so popular because he embodies an idealized version of Lone Star manhood. It’s the boots (one set is emblazoned with the word »liberty«). The dropped g’s: likin’, fightin’, smokin’. It’s that until he entered politics he was an authentic West Texas rancher, a vocation many Texans still find enormously appealing. Above all, though, it’s that craggy western face; Perry is forever being compared to the Marlboro Man.

During his first statewide campaign, for agriculture commissioner, in 1990, »there was a poster of Perry they put out, wearing chaps, feet up on a bale of hay, his crotch front and center«, remembers the lobbyist Bill Miller. »I saw that poster everywhere, in every office I went into, and I thought, This guy is hot. In every sense of the word.« Mil­ler laughs. »I remember having lunch with a liberal lady friend of mine, and she leans over to me and says, ‘Bill, do you think Rick Perry puts socks down the front of his pants?’ That’s when I realized he was really getting under some people’s skins.«”