Rick Perry?s Bush Problem
By MATT BAIWell, of course Rick Perry says he?s now going to take another look at running for president. Wouldn?t you?
The guy recently became the longest-serving governor in Texas history, and now he looks at a Republican field led by the former governors of three states ? Massachusetts, Minnesota and Utah ? whose combined populations don?t come close to the number of Americans who live under the lone-star flag. Given how wildly uninspired Republicans are searching for another candidate to drag into the race, you would think a successful governor like Mr. Perry would need a pretty compelling reason not to run for president.
As it happens, such a reason might just exist.
Republicans talk about something called ?Bush fatigue.? It almost always comes up in relation to Jeb Bush, the brainy and politically talented brother of George W. Bush, who was himself the popular governor of a pretty sizable state. It?s a common theory in conservative circles that while Jeb (everyone calls him Jeb) might be the most formidable candidate out there to challenge President Obama, he is nonetheless cursed by his last name.
That?s because a lot of Americans, and no small number of Republican primary voters, reminisce about the last Bush presidency the way they might about, say, once having contracted shingles. The sullied family brand is thought to be a deal breaker, at least for the moment.
When I interviewed Jeb Bush last year, he told me that he didn?t worry about the brand and wouldn?t hesitate to run for president if he really felt like it. And I?ve never been entirely sold on the Bush fatigue theory, either. Jeb Bush bears little resemblance to his older brother physically or temperamentally, and you can imagine him dominating Republican debates in a way that would quickly differentiate him.
In Mr. Perry?s case, however, the biographical and visceral similarities to Mr. Bush might actually prove harder to ignore.
Leave aside that there?s little warmth between Mr. Perry and the Bush family, especially after the elder George Bush endorsed Mr. Perry?s opponent, Kay Bailey Hutchison, when she tried to unseat him in the 2010 Republican primary. What the country would probably see is another Texas governor with the same Texan talk and Texan swagger, someone who once schemed with Karl Rove and who, as a social conservative, is so reliably dogmatic that he signed a bill that made it explicitly illegal for the state to confiscate your gun in the event of martial law or some kind of federal takeover, or maybe if the British decided to invade again.
You think Mr. Bush had a problem with the federal government and its incursion on states rights? Mr. Perry once refused to take secession off the table.
If you?re a fan of the old ?West Wing? series, you may recall the season in which James Brolin played a Southern governor, brimming with folksy machismo and contempt for Eastern intellectualism, who won the Republican nomination by acclaim. (?Mr. President,? he once drawled memorably, ?how many different ways you think you?re gonna find to call me dumb??) The character was clearly inspired by George W. Bush, but Rick Perry could easily have slipped into the role undetected.
None of this would necessarily prevent Mr. Perry from winning his party?s nomination. Despite a late entry and a lack of organization, he would probably be an instant top-tier candidate if he jumped in, a force in early states like Iowa and South Carolina, and he would have a pretty good talking point in the booming Texas economy. This is not Fred Thompson.
But general elections are largely determined by the tide of independent voters, who soured on Mr. Bush in his second term and swung to Mr. Obama by a margin of eight percentage points in 2008. Those voters aren?t exactly enamored of Mr. Obama anymore, but it is fair to wonder whether they could be persuaded to return to the Republican fold by a candidate whose r�sum� and rhetoric would feel so painfully familiar. It would be like Democrats nominating a peanut farmer in 1988.
Presidential candidates tend to embody either futurism or nostalgia, the next American era or the last. The problem for Rick Perry, if he?s serious about running, may be that he won?t get to decide which one he represents.
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Source: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/01/rick-perrys-bush-problem/
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