NASHUA, N.H. — When Gov. Rick Perry of Texas finished up a round-table discussion Wednesday at a manufacturing company here, one man was so impressed that he leapt from his seat, offering the governor high praise.

Mr. Perry, the man said, had come across as “very moderate,” especially compared with the caricature of him in the news media as somewhere to the “right of Attila the Hun.”

Mr. Perry — who once mused about Texas seceding from the country he now wishes to run — has never been known for his moderation. But voters in New Hampshire on Wednesday expecting to meet the man with a blustery confidence and down-home twang were greeted with a far more subdued and measured campaigner, one who stayed mostly on message about getting “America working again” and refused to answer questions from reporters.

“I got in trouble talking about the Federal Reserve yesterday,” Mr. Perry said to laughter at a Politics and Eggs breakfast in Bedford, referring to his sharply criticized comments suggesting that the actions of Ben S. Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, were potentially “treasonous.”