TEXAS VIEW: Valuable lessons from Perry's defeat

Perhaps someday presidential elections will be won the way Gov. Rick Perry won re-election in Texas in 2010 — on his terms, controlling his message through scripted appearances and targeted social media, refusing to debate opponents or face the hard questions of newspaper editorial boards.

If that day comes, corporations really will be people. The president will be what amounts to a corporation, or at least the product of one, selected and developed in R&D-like fashion, packaged carefully for voter consumption and shipped to market through a strategic route that avoids delays and obstacles such as viable, articulate opponents.

Let’s hope the current system, flawed as it is, endures. It sure beats what Perry pulled off in his gubernatorial run. The people still need to see how candidates stand up to each other in a debate armed only with their looks, their intellect and the timbre of their voices. The people deserve to see how candidates answer questions they didn’t expect from neutral or hostile questioners they can’t control, in debates and news media interviews and at town hall meetings.

Advertisements, social media and all other campaign scripting are an important demonstration of a candidate’s abilities. But the power to squelch discourse as Perry did in 2010 amounts to a bloodless coup. Let’s hope the lesson in Perry’s successes and failures is that what he pulled off in 2010 should be a one-time anomaly rather than a template for national dominance.

The Republican presidential primary system that Perry couldn’t control performed the crucial function of exposing his lack of fitness for the office — exposure that Texas voters in 2010 were denied. The nation needs a president — the Republicans need a nominee — who is well-informed, can articulate his or her positions and challenge those of opponents convincingly.
The nation also needs those qualities in a vice president. The eventual Republican nominee should keep that in mind when selecting a running mate. The lone quality Perry has shown that the nominee might appreciate, other than good looks, is a curious flexibility we didn’t know he possessed until he endorsed Newt Gingrich. We’d have thought Gingrich way too liberal and morally suspect to win Perry’s vote — and that not choosing stridently monogamous, anti-abortion, anti-gay, fiscally conservative Rick Santorum was downright disloyal to Perry’s stated principles and most ardent evangelical supporters.

If nothing else, the end to Perry’s campaign promises immediate relief to Texas taxpayers from the exorbitant costs of his traveling security detail, estimated at $400,000 a month. Beyond that, the only benefit we see is that he’ll have fewer opportunities to embarrass Texas on a national stage.

The campaign cost Texas dearly in other ways. Perry manipulated the Legislature to establish his campaign credentials, severely cutting our children’s education to establish his fiscal conservatism and undermining women’s rights to establish his anti-abortion social conservatism.

The Dallas Morning News observed in a recent editorial that Perry has three years left on his term and that “what Texas needs now is his best leadership, a pragmatism and wisdom born of lessons learned in defeat.” We commend that high road and wish we could chance it. But, based on Perry’s performance and predilections, that road is a dangerous washout. What, his supporters may ask, about Texas’ thriving economy under his leadership? We know, and so do they, that Texas’ economic performance occurs neither because of nor despite him, but independent of him — as it should, according to the political philosophy he espouses.

So, based on Perry’s performance, the constitutional limits on the powers of his office, and his oft-stated belief in less government, Texas’ best hope for the remainder of his term is that he govern as little as possible. That’s a road we could walk with him, arm in arm.