Rick Perry’s departure from the Republican presidential primary was, by any standard, the result of a walloping. Simply put, he was terrible at running for president. In fact, I probably owe the readers of TNR a mea culpa. Back in September, I wrote that Rick Perry probably wouldn’t be a catastrophic debater. Sorry, guys.

Perhaps I didn’t consider just how much the local view of Perry—I’ve been following Perry from Austin for years—would fail to translate to the wider, and in some ways stranger, landscape of national politics. (In my defense, it’s been an unpredictable primary season.) In any case, the next question is whether the governor’s failed bid on the national stage will have repercussions for him back in Texas.

According to Public Policy Polling, his approval rating in the state now stands at 42 percent. Surprisingly, that is lower than Barack Obama’s, at 44 percent. The same survey found that in a head-to-head matchup within the state, Perry would edge Obama by just one point. Most of the drop off in support can be attributed to disaffected Republicans. Although he is still popular with much of the state GOP, Perry’s erratic presidential campaign turned off some.

But this is nothing new for Perry. He has learned to live with disdain coming from some portion of the electorate. In 2006, he was famously re-elected as governor with only 39 percent of the vote in a split field (including one other Republican). To some extent, he has previously dealt with this problem by simply ignoring it, and agreeing to take his lumps. Indeed, when he’s tangled with the Texas legislature, he’s often had to make “a strategic retreat,” as he described the end of his presidential campaign. It was the legislature that overturned his executive order about the HPV vaccine, and the legislature that helped kill his controversial 2002 idea to build a “Trans-Texas Corridor” via public-private toll roads.

But politicians in Austin, sensing the blood in the water, know they are now dealing with an especially weakened Perry, and they may be eager to take advantage. Having been re-elected in 2010, Perry is insulated from immediate electoral consequences. His longer-term plans have yet to be determined, however. Given that he’s already the longest-serving governor in Texas history, he wouldn’t lose much face if he decides to step down when his term runs out in 2014. On the other hand, his spokesman, Ray Sullivan, has said that Perry might stand for re-election, or even take another shot at the presidential nomination two years later. That may be wishful thinking, but such bravado is in Perry’s nature.



Texas Democrats, of course, may feel validated by the way some of their greatest complaints about Perry—his swagger, his unpreparedness—were confirmed by a national audience. Their cheer, however, should be mitigated by the fact that, for years, they have failed to mount a strong challenge against Perry, intimidated by his fundraising prowess and his facility with retail politics. (One of his former rivals famously told a reporter that running against Perry was “like running against God.”)