Rick Perry Begins His Improbable Attempt At An Unlikely Comeback
Rick Perry is hoping to do something that hasn't happened before in American politics, come back from a campaign that imploded.
Former Texas Governor Rick Perry, who four years ago saw a campaign that went from the top to the bottom in record time, announced today that he is once again running for President:
ADDISON, Tex. — Rick Perry, the former Texas governor whose 2012 campaign for the White House turned into a political disaster that humbled and weakened the most powerful Republican in the state, announced Thursday that he will run for president again in 2016.
Mr. Perry is the latest candidate to officially enter a crowded field of Republican presidential contenders, declared and undeclared, several of whom have Texas ties and have overshadowed him in recent months, including Senator Ted Cruz and Jeb Bush, the brother of former President George W. Bush, Mr. Perry’s predecessor in the governor’s mansion.
“We will make it through the Obama years,” he told a cheering crowd at a small municipal airport here in Addison, a northern suburb of downtown Dallas. Saying, “It’s time,” he declared in an impassioned speech, “I am running for the presidency of the United States of America.”
The location had to do with his giant stage prop – a C-130 plane, the type he flew serving in the United States Air Force in the 1970s.
The plane – parked behind the stage and emblazoned with “Perry for President” – illustrated one of the ways Mr. Perry plans to distinguish himself from the other Republican candidates, by emphasizing his service in the military and his support from veterans, several of whom joined him on stage, including Marcus Luttrell, the former Navy SEAL whose memoir inspired the movie “Lone Survivor.”
In his speech, Mr. Perry also sought to separate himself from other Republican contenders by casting himself as a leader who has done the work rather than a politician who talks about doing it, pointing to his handling of natural disasters and crisises at the border and his 14-year tenure as governor of a state with the 12th-largest economy in the world.
“The question of every candidate will be this one: when have you led?” Mr. Perry said. “Leadership is not a speech on the Senate floor. It’s not what you say. It’s what you do. And we will not find the kind of leadership needed to revitalize the country by looking to the political class in Washington.”
But whether Mr. Perry has done enough to repair the damage from his failed run in 2012 and to thrust himself out of the second tier of candidates he finds himself in remains unclear. Even in Texas, Mr. Perry has already lost crucial support to some of his rivals. Steve Munisteri, a former chairman of the Republican Party of Texas, has been heading up Senator Rand Paul’s presidential campaign in Texas. Many of the grass-roots Tea Party activists in Texas have flocked to Mr. Cruz, while some of those in the more mainstream Texas Republican establishment are supporting Mr. Bush, whose son, George P. Bush, is the state’s new land commissioner.
“Activists will be attracted to him and give him a second chance if he can bring some buzz and show the energy to demonstrate he can build a viable effort,” said David M. Carney, a former political consultant to Mr. Perry and a top strategist for his 2012 campaign. “With so many new shiny objects in the race this cycle, this will be the hardest hurdle he will need to climb. Perry provides a robust record of accomplishments that no one can rival,” Mr. Carney said. “The question remains: Can he put the other pieces into play, and has his time passed?”
His 2012 bid for president was filled with gaffes that became national punch lines. He famously uttered “oops” during a debate after he failed to recall the name of one of three federal agencies he would eliminate if elected president. Shortly before he dropped out of the race, he ended up in fifth place in the Iowa caucuses.
In the years since, Mr. Perry has worked at retooling and sharpening both his image and his political chops, making frequent trips to early voting states, meeting with influential policy experts, attending the World Economic Forum in 2014 in Switzerland and even making two cosmetic changes — donning hipster-style black-rimmed eyeglasses and trading his cowboy boots for black loafers.
“He has focused like a laser beam on the task of running for president in 2016 almost since he dropped out of the race,” said Deirdre Delisi, a former chief of staff to Mr. Perry and the policy director for his 2012 campaign. “He has really benefited from using the time in between the last cycle and this cycle, and getting himself more comfortable to be on the national stage.”
Rick Perry’s story is a familiar one.
He entered the 2012 Presidential race at a relatively late date to much fanfare, and saw his poll numbers and his fundraising hit record levels in a very short period of time. When the debates rolled around, though his gaffes on immigration, the Gardasil controversy, and his seeming inability to form coherent thoughts took their toll and he was quickly brought down to Earth. In comments afterwards, Perry seemed to admit that at least part of his problem was that he was not physically up to the rigors of campaigning due to the fact that he had just had back surgery some six weeks before diving into the Presidential race. Whatever the reason, though, the first impression that most voters got of Rick Perry was not a flattering one and, as Harry Enten notes, Perry is trying to so something that few Presidential candidates have ever been able to do:
Perry’s collapse beats out the other non-Romneys who had brief star turns during the 2012 GOP primary. It was worse than those of Newt Gingrich (who actually won two primaries) and Herman Cain, who had never won elected office and left the race amid sexual harassment allegations.
Perry’s fall was also worse than other late “here I come on a white horse” entrants, including Democrat Wesley Clark, who had never run for political office, and Republican Fred Thompson, who bored crowds and clearlyhadn’t been keeping up with the news after leaving the Senate.
Perhaps most impressively, Perry’s drop somehow beats what I would argue were the most epic declines of all time. I’m talking about Rudy Giuliani, who sat atop GOP primary polls for much of 2007 and then all but disappeared when people actually started casting ballots in 2008; Gary Hart, who dropped out of the 1988 race as the front-runner after his affair with Donna Rice became public and then re-entered the race and found little support; John Glenn, who was well-known as an astronaut, less so as a politician; and Howard Dean, who fell apart in Iowa and did that whole “scream” thing. And who can forget Edmund Muskie, who was famously accused of cryingafter defending his wife from attacks from the Manchester Union-Leader?
You might notice something about this list of candidates: Not a single one ever ran for president again. In fact, no candidate who averaged 10 percent or more in at least one month from September through December in the year before the primary and ended up with less than 15 percent of the national primary vote has ever run again. Simply put, there have not been second acts for candidates who fall that hard in presidential politics.
Can Perry, who suffered the worst collapse of any of these candidates, possibly come back? Without any perfect precedent, it’s difficult to know.
It’s not uncommon for people who have run for President and lost to do it again. William Jennings Bryan did it three times, Thomas Dewey was the Republican nominee for President in two successive elections and Adalai Stevenson did the same thing for the Democrats, and Mitt Romney was a two-time candidate as well. While those candidates were never elected President, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush all were and they all had unsuccessfully run for office once before. The difference between Perry and all of these people, though, is that none of them suffered the kind of devastating fall from grace that Perry did, and none of them ran a campaign that made them look like, well, an idiot. As Enten notes, Perry is in a class of candidates made up entirely of people who never went on to win their party’s nomination or become President. If he were to somehow manage to win the Republican nomination in 2016, he would do something that has never been done in modern American political history.
Based on the evidence we have so far, it doesn’t look like he’s going to be successful.
Perry is in the unique position of being what I may believe be the first major candidate for President to ever begin a campaign while being under a the shadow of criminal indictment. Perry has a criminal indictment for public corruption hanging over his head that seems unlikely to be resolved at any point in the near future, and which may go to trial while he’s campaigning. The indictment centers around dispute between Perry and thechief prosecutor in Austin at the time he was Governor, whose duties included investigating and prosecuting crimes involving members of the Executive Branch.After the prosecutor was arrested on a DUI charge, Perry said that he would not sign the bill funding her office unless she resigned but many of his opponents suggested that his real motivation for going after her was the ongoing investigations of some of his appointment. The indictment alleges that Perry used his veto power against the prosecutor. This is, as I’ve noted before, an odd charge since the Texas Constitution gives the Governor unlimited veto power. Legal scholars on both sides of the aisle have argued that the indictment is legally insufficient, but despite that the Judge presiding over the case has denied several attempts by Perry’s attorneys to dismiss the case, most recently in January. Those rulings are apparently now being appealed through the Texas court system, but it’s unclear when those appeals might be ruled on. Obviously, being under indictment is not an ideal situation for a candidate.
In the national polls, as well as the polling in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Florida, Perry is in the bottom of the pack with somewhere between 3.3% and 2.5% support. Based on the current RealClearPolitics average, Perry would just barely make the cut to get into the first debates coming up in August since he stands at the bottom of a list of the top ten candidates in the race. Unless those numbers improve dramatically, Rick Perry’s second act isn’t going to be much better than his first.
What’s the over and under for the final count of Republican candidates???
So his first act will be to back out of an agreement put together with the P5+1? (Britain, China, France and Russia and Germany) An agreement that the Israeli military seems to endorse?
http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/04/us-iran-nuclear-israel-idUSKBN0OK0OF20150604
Brilliant!!! Obviously Perry is a foreign policy mastermind.
Didn’t we do the dumb Texan thing a while ago? It’s way too soon to do it again.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnHmskwqCCQ
You know, Doug, it might take a lot less effort if you just posted a list of Republican governors and senators who definitely weren’t running for president.
Bitch stole my look.
I totally rock the readers way harder than Perry does. My specs actually have optical glass that help me see. I can’t read a book without my glasses. Perry can’t read a poll with his glasses.
Hey, where’s Perry? (h/t to Phineas and Ferb.)
Yeah, Doug. You missed the major difference between this campaign and 2012.This time he’s wearing glasses! He can’t lose now.
Did anyone else notice he was sweating like a stuffed pig – doing a Nixon.
To repeat what I said before: he has attributed his poor showing in the 2012 debates to taking pain meds. When I ran a small business, saying that you were stoned in your interview would disqualify you from a second interview.
Everyone who votes for him needs to pee in a cup.
@Ron Beasley:
Nixon actually had the political savvy to get that he came off as pretty creepy. He played with it; he made it work. A sweaty, creepy, paranoid man spanked the crap out of McGovern and won 49-1, 520 to 17, 61% to 38%. Nixon never said “Oops” during a debate. Nixon had a secret plan to end the Vietnam War. Nixon won Minnesota, for Christs’s sake. Minnesota! I have secret footage of Hubert Humphrey pretending to vote for McGovern while actually pulling the lever for Nixon. A young Mondale is in the background. It’s chilling, chilling stuff. It’s 8 mm and a bit choppy, but you can totally see Humphrey.
Perry looks good in a suit. He looks a movie President. He looks like he should be in a Michael Bay movie pretending to be Reaganesque. He’s not dumber than a rock, but he is dumber than my next-door neighbor. I don’t want my next-door neighbor to be President. I don’t want my next-door neighbor to be alderman.
Perry couldn’t even carry Austin if Aaron Franklin was his running mate.
WHY NOT THE WORST? – He can’t stand up in debates. His past campaign for president lacked direction. Nothing to see here, move on….
I don’t think the electorate on either side of the aisle is in the mood for a clown or a rock star. We just had a clown and then a rock star. I think now we’re in the mood for a mechanic. I think we want an LBJ (with fewer Vietnams.) For the Dems that’s Hillary. For the Republicans, if they want to have a chance, they ought to go to Kasich. If not Kasich then Jeb or Walker. Rubio reads as a kid, not a fixer.
It’s weird at this point not to know who the establishment guy is. Is it Bush or is it Walker or Rubio? There’s at least a three-way for the money wing of the GOP. The Jesus wing is just as split, pretending to like Carson, really wanting Huckabee or Santorum. The true crazies like Carson and Trump and Jindal and Cruz. The Bombs wing will take anyone but Rand Paul.
Weird year.
Let’s see: hipster glasses.
Okay then, the comeback is truly underway, he’s smarter now.
He has an excellent chance of winning it all.
@michael reynolds:
It’s weird not to know what the Republican establishment is anymore.
Outside of James Baker, I’m not sure how to define the Republican establishment anymore.
Plus, your money, God, or bombs taxonomy is an an Or understanding of this world and not an And thing. Respectfully.
Adelson is new money, but he is still money, but Adelson is also bombs. Friess is more of a money + God guy. I guess that the Koch brothers are the most straight-up money guys, but they’re not afraid to delve into God and bombs territory to win. The Koch brothers are the Al Davis of Republican politics; just win, baby. Adelson and Friess want to prove a point. The Kochs just want to steal Granny’s pension money like any normal American oligarch.
None of these guys are the “establishment” as we’ve known it in the past, but these three camps will determine the nominee. Bush, Walker or Rubio are not necessarily the establishment guys, they are the safe guys. The ones least likely to alienate persuadable voters. Santorum, Cruz and other crazies aren’t anti-Estabishment per se, they are just less safe candidate choices to run in the general election. Well, maybe Bush is arguably Establishment because James Baker. Hard to argue with that 😉 A fixer fixes things, it’s axiomatic.
I don’t know who or what comprises the Republican Establishment anymore. Boehner maybe. And he has that thankless job only because no one else wants it. With those idiots? No thank you. And his team can’t even count heads let alone twist arms. McConnell? Republican legislators are more likely to discover the Higg’s boson in their underpants as they are to actually write new legislation. Republican legislators and their staff couldn’t draft and pass a Bratwurst Appreciation Day to be celebrated in Milwaukee during Octoberfest hosted by David Hasselhoff without fucking it up. We’d accidentally end up legalizing open carry and defunding ACORN in East Prussia or Siam or somesuch. There would be a poorly thought out abortion restriction that was patently unconstitutional. Ultrasound wands would be involved. We’d have to send letters via aeromail to various consulates to apologize and to paper over the debacle. Autogyros would be dispatched. Onions would be attached to belts.
Little help, please?
@de stijl: Even the Koch brother’s money is nothing without the blessing of FOX news and Rush Limbaugh – the real Republican establishment.
A ‘Comeback’? Comeback implies he had once ‘arrived’, been to the winners circle. Perry has never been anywhere but the Texas governorship, and sorry to say that is like Honorable Mention in a regional spelling bee.
@de stijl: Much of this, I think, is process driven, the ascendance of primaries over back rooms and the flood of money, much of it from individuals rather than bundlers. 50 years ago a Ben Carson couldn’t just raise his hand and be a candidate.
Since Jeb’s grandfather was a GOP senator and he’s third generation money I feel comfortable regarding Jeb as establishment GOP. However, it’s not unusual for the Republican Establishment president to be a hustler, not a member of the establishment, i.e. Nixon and Reagan. And Eisenhower wasn’t a political hustler, but also wasn’t born establishment. Aside from Jeb, yes, it’s hard to see who or what is the Republican Establishment these days. I wish the press would pay more attention to this sort of thing, but it’s easier to stenograph. It kind of smells to me like the resource extraction billionaires have been taking over, driven by fear we might actually do something about AGW. But I have no window into internal GOP politics. I’d encourage Doug, Steven Taylor, and Dr. Joyner to address the subject of just what “Republican Establishment” means anymore.
We’re turning more and more Japanese. The politicians are there only for entertainment, and everything is actually run by the civil service.
If only–we’d be much more efficient.
@michael reynolds: “Rubio reads as a kid, not a fixer.”
I think Rubio’s campaign ended yesterday:
“We’re not nation building. We’re helping them build their nation.”
If you’re trying to run as the smart one, you can’t afford to say things this stupid.
@OzarkHillbilly: “Comeback implies he had once ‘arrived’, been to the winners circle. ”
“Come back? I hate that term. It’s a return.”
310,000 jobs created this month, when you count the adjustments to previous months.
Looking forward to hearing why that’s a bad thing.
@de stijl:
Awesome, ds — made my day.
I actually met McGovern during that campaign, at a popular buffet restaurant in Omaha. If I hadn’t been in elementary school at the time, I’d totally have voted for him.
@de stijl:
Clearly, we need a Venn diagram, with each of the clowns correctly pigeonholed. Circles for Croesus, Mars, Jesus, and Ayn Rand.
Those of you with infographics chops, get on it and post a link.
@wr:
OT, but Larison has a whole blog post on that:
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/larison/rubio-and-nation-building/
@DrDaveT:
Hmm. None of those four captures the xenophobia dimension. What’s the best label for that fifth circle? “The Wall”?
Rubio is approaching Perry levels of idiocy in his policy statements-and he hasn’t even gotten to the debates yet!
I’m thinking Scott Waker is the one most likely to win it all, now. At least he hasn’t made any immediately disqualifying statements yet.
@stonetools: Obviously enough, you haven’t heard his latest on how women are cool with pregnancies from rape…. After a month or two.
@edmondo:
Twice – Johnson and Eisenhower were both born in Texas.
@DrDaveT:
The Kochs have more money than Croesus, so obviously God is in third place.
@george:
Johnson wasn’t dumb. He certainly wasn’t naive. He was utterly craven. He would do anything to win. He also designed and passed the Great Society. He knew what would happen.
He knew that the racial equality portions of the Great Society would damn Democrats for a generation. He did it anyway. It was the tactically dumb electoral move, and he still did it.
A person can be prescient on civil rights and blind on foreign policy – on war.
Civic utilitarian morality is a slippery thing. A man be both a bastard and a hero.
@de stijl:
Neither was Eisenhower by any reasonable standard of intelligence.
I was just noting that there have actually been two presidents from Texas.
And actually, I don’t think any president in history has been dumb (at least not compared to the population which is the only useful definition) – I’d be surprised if any in fact have been even less than average intelligence, let alone so far below average to be called dumb.
Immoral, craven, power hunger – yup, those are common in presidents. Far less than average intelligence (ie dumb)? I’d bet against it.
For that matter, though I think Perry would be a disastrous President, I suspect he’s at least of average intelligence – ie not dumb.