Rick Perry - a roundup of commentary on the GOP candidate

From the Dallas Morning News:

Here in Texas, we know a few things about Gov. Rick Perry.

Foremost, he knows how to win. He has mowed down political opponents in a 27-year unbeaten streak.

Texas also knows that Rick Perry the officeholder is not at the same level as Rick Perry the candidate.

In nearly 11 years as governor, he has not been known for his problem-solving or innovation. Perry has instead established himself as a power governor who doesn't like to be crossed.

Now the nation is getting an eyeful of what Perry does best -- compete. The stakes today are not only higher for him, but for the nation.

That calls for Perry to do what hasn't come naturally for him. The times call for solutions, not catchphrases or lines in the sand.

The state Constitution says we must, and the Legislature sees that it gets done every two years. Perry is often disengaged from that process and offers little imagination.

The nation's challenges also call for neutralizing a toxic atmosphere in Washington. And bringing sides together is not a Perry talent.

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From Harold Meyerson, Washington Post:

Rick Perry's Texas is Ross Perot's Mexico come north.

Consider the Texas Perry holds up to the rest of the nation for admiration. It has the fourth-highest poverty rate of any state.

It tied last year for the highest percentage of workers in minimum-wage jobs. It ranks first in adults without high school diplomas. Twenty-six percent of Texans have no health insurance -- the highest percentage of any state.

Perry seems quite comfortable with the state's lagging performance in what we might term the pursuit-of-happiness index.

Perry wants to unravel the national social contract and once again have us go state by state, with the low-wage, low-reg states dragging down the others, much as Chinese mercantilism has dragged down wages and living standards across the United States.

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Since the recession officially ended two years ago, Texas has added nearly 300,000 jobs, 37 percent of all the net new jobs in America. If Perry has a formula for boosting employment, Americans would like to know it.

Perry suggested he does have that formula: cut taxes, cut general revenue spending, curb frivolous lawsuits and avoid costly regulations.

Texas has its economic failures, such as a higher proportion of minimum-wage jobs than any state but Mississippi. Its unemployment is actually higher than in more liberal states like New York and Massachusetts.

So it's fair to say that Texas has not produced economic miracles under Perry. But miracles are rare.

It has produced some solid achievements, and its experience offers some lessons the nation could afford to heed.

From the Washington Post:

'If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I dunno what y'all would do to him in Iowa, but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas.

"Printing more money to play politics ... is almost treacherous, or treasonous, in my opinion."

Thus spoke Gov. Rick Perry on Monday, referring to Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve.

Now, the actions of the Fed leading up to, during and after the 2008 financial crisis will be studied and critiqued for decades. Maybe Perry could have done better.

If Perry has evidence to the contrary, he should present it. If not, he should apologize.

But questioning his opponents' good faith seems to be part of Perry's early playbook. He already has disparaged President Obama for not serving in the military.

And when asked whether Obama loves his country, Perry responded, "I dunno, you need to ask him."

In the days after the Jan. 8 shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and others near Tucson, there was widespread revulsion at the nastiness of political rhetoric and commitment to argue issues without questioning opponents' motivations or character.

Perry's presidential campaign, not yet a week old, suggests he didn't get the message. We hope he begins to make his case in a way that will reflect better on his own character.

From Glenn Garvin, Miami Herald:

The participation of a Texas politician in any race guarantees good times for reporters. Just the same, I'm staying off the Perry bandwagon. And anybody who believes that America could use less government -- or just less Barack Obama -- should join me.

Perry and Obama have a lot more in common than either would like to admit. They both think they're smarter than the laws of economics.

And they both see taxpayer money as a giant trough for feeding their political pals. Perry is actually truthful about this, sort of.

"I am a probusiness governor," he told Time magazine. "I will be a probusiness president." What he means is that he's pro-certain-businesses, the ones run by his friends.

And Perry will resort to strong-arm robbery when necessary.

The biggest controversy of his decade in the governor's mansion was an attempted land-grab called the Trans-Texas Corridor, a $185 billion system of superhighways for which the state would have had to acquire as much as a thousand square miles of territory.

To deal with troublesome property owners who didn't want to sell, Perry persuaded the legislature to pass a new form of eminent domain known as "quick-claim," in which the state could have seized any land it wanted with just 90 days of notice, then "negotiate" the price later.

The superhighway plan died in 2010 only because the federal government showed more concern for the rights of bugs and bunnies than Perry did for the property rights of his constituents, pulling the plug out of environmental concerns.

Obama's enemies often refer to him as a socialist. But what he really has been practicing in Washington is crony capitalism, using programs like TARP and the stimulus to funnel swag to politically connected companies. Perry has been doing the same with a smaller budget in Austin.

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From Maureen Dowd, New York Times:

Driving through Midwest cornfields in his opaque bus, our opaque president found himself in The Field of Dashed Dreams. He made his sobering case that America is still great while Gov. Rick Perry barreled past on his own bus, breaking creative new ground in volatility.

The Texas governor called the president "the greatest threat to our country" and said Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, would commit a "treasonous" act if he "prints more money."

By the end of the day, it was a barroom brawl, with Karl Rove telling Fox News that it was not "presidential" to call the Fed chief, appointed by President Bush, a traitor.

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From Dale McFeatters, Scripps Howard News Service:

For an extrovert politician, Perry is curiously press-shy. At a GOP dinner in Waterloo, Iowa, Dan Balz of the Washington Post reports, "When the program ended, he quickly exited out the back, his security force helping to shield him from the shouted questions of reporters."

This echoed an event last year when Perry told a national convention of opinion writers that he couldn't take their questions after his luncheon speech because of the press of state business. On the way out, he proceeded to give a lengthy interview to a local TV reporter within sight of his spurned hosts.

Texas is a big political stage, but a national presidential campaign is an infinitely bigger one, and the voters in the northern tier and Midwest might not buy his Texas act.