Perry was in full charm mode Monday as he swept through the Iowa State Fair with a breezy manner unlike most other Republican candidates.
Eating a pork-chop-on-a-stick with one hand and signing autographs with the other, the 61-year-old governor backslapped, shook hands and hugged his way from the booth honoring military veterans to the lifesize carving of a cow from a block of butter.
His political message, for now, is concise: Texas has created 40 percent of the jobs in the United States since 2009. Critics say many of those jobs paid low wages.
"I know how to create jobs," he told several dozen fairgoers in his distinctive West Texas accent. With one leg mounted on a hay bale at the candidate "soapbox" at the fairgrounds, Perry added, "You let the private sector do it. Free 'em up from overtaxation, free 'em up from overregulation, free 'em up from over-litigation."
"Government," Perry roared on the soapbox stage, "get out of the way."
Then he called on Obama - who arrived in Iowa on Monday after his campaign road trip began in Minnesota - to suspend federal regulations for six months.
At the same time, David Frum, a former top White House adviser to President George W. Bush, wrote: "If Texas has created many jobs, it has failed to create good jobs. Many of the jobs created since 2009 pay only minimum wage, and Texas, along with Mississippi, has the highest percentage of minimum wage workers in the U.S."
Perry's charm offensive in Des Moines fared better.
Mike Gargano of Connecticut was impressed that Perry signed the bill of his son's ball cap. "I think he's genuine," Gargano said. "He just seemed like one of the people."
But while Purple Heart recipient Alec Quijano of Des Moines appreciated fellow veteran Perry thanking him for his military service, "it was politicking. He seems like a nice guy, but it is what it is."
(I)Until I saw clips of him in the past two or three days, I hadn't realized how much watching and seeing Perry is just like having George W. Bush back in our living rooms. Maybe this will be an ingredient for strong conservative support. I can't imagine that any sophisticated Republican operative thinks it's a plus in winning 270 electoral votes. When Republicans ran against the first post-Nixon Democratic president, in 1980, they didn't try to find someone who looked and sounded like Tricky Dick.
(II) Just after Sarah Palin was nominated three years ago, I argued that anyone who moves all at once from state-level to national-level politics is going to be shocked by the greater intensity of the scrutiny and the broader range of expertise called for. Therefore that person is destined to make mistakes; the question is how bad they will be. For Palin, they showed up in her disastrous first few interviews, especially with Katie Couric. Perry is getting his own introduction to this principle just now.
(III) For the past few months, Democrats have had the suspicion that Republicans are playing a double or even triple-game in opposing the Obama Administration on spending and deficit issues. At the most principled levels, they're upholding their belief in a smaller government. At the next level down, they're trying to limit Obama's operational successes wherever they can. And, most cynical of all, they understand the idea of "the worse, the better." The surest path toward beating Obama next year is for the economy to stagnate or decline.
Perry's comments about Ben Bernanke cut through any such subtlety. If Bernanke "prints money" in the next 15 months, toward the end of forestalling a recession or preserving jobs, Perry would consider that "almost treasonous." This is the kind of thing you just don't hear from national-level politicians, and for a reason. (For starters: the punishment for treason is death.)
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