The stereotypical American male is a rugged individualist. He values family and faith, and does honest, manual work to provide for his loved ones and his community.

This American male relishes the great outdoors – an untamed, manly realm where he and other like-minded dudes appreciate natural beauty by shooting wild animals and angling over-fished rivers. Even his more cosmopolitan, white-collar counterparts – whom "true" American males dismiss as effete and over-educated – aspire to this aesthetic, and will pay large sums of money for jaunts to "dude ranches", high-end camping trips and garages full of tools they never use. This American male – ever a fan of plaid shirts, woodsy aftershave, rare steak and domestic beer – views red-blooded gunslingers such as John Wayne and Clint Eastwood as role models, toward which "real men" should aspire.

This American male is also irrelevant.

Drastic demographic shifts over the last half century suggest that the archetypal American male is on the decline: manufacturing employment, long the realm of men, has slumped over the last 60 years.

"In 1970, men earned 60% of all college degrees. In 1980, the figure fell to 50%; by 2006, it was 43%. Women now surpass men in college degrees by almost three to two. […] In 1950, 5% of men at the prime working age were unemployed. As of last year, 20% were not working, the highest ever recorded," noted William J Bennett, former US secretary of education and author of The Book of Man: Readings on the Path to Manhood, in a recent op-ed article.

This is exacerbated by the fact that boys' academic performance has slipped, as schools have placed greater emphasis on verbal skills – an area where girls have traditionally excelled.

In her 2010 Atlantic article "The End of Men", author Hanna Rosin suggests that women might be better-suited than men for postindustrial society. The result: men, even insecure in their roles as basic breadwinners, increasingly feel out of place.

This trend, which underscores a broader identity crisis, sheds light on why "cowboy" politicians – from Ronald Reagan to George W Bush to Rick Perry – still play a role in American society. The GOP, especially Tea Partiers, attract men who are worried about their changing – and potentially waning – place in the United States. A 2009 article on Slate's XX Factor aptly identified Republicans as the "Party of Anxious Masculinity".

"If they actually made the reforms necessary to attract more female candidates, they'd alienate the 'God, guns, and gays' crowd that votes their masculine anxieties, and fears female liberation, gay rights and someone taking away their phallic symbols above all other things," wrote Amanda Marcotte. "Without the angry white male vote, the GOP has nothing."

It's no surprise, then, that this spooked machismo has returned to the 2012 election – with Texas Governor Rick Perry's candidacy. Though he's no longer the pollsters' frontrunner, Perry's biography evokes in almost kitsch detail a mythic world of cowboy Americana – and the traditional gender roles that characterise that way of life. Perry carries a hollow point-loaded .380 Ruger when he runs: he made news in 2010 when he shot a coyote that threatened his dog.

"The change we seek will never emanate out of Washington, DC," he says on his website. "It will come from the windswept prairies of Middle America, the farms and factories across this great land."

The type of change Perry calls for – and embodies as a caricature he-man Texan – isn't change at all, though. It's the same insecurity-driven talk that Arnold Schwarzenegger used on several occasions, when he implored his opponents and the public not to be "girlie men". It's the same phallocentric leadership Americans saw when George W Bush landed on an aircraft carrier – iconic in an crotch-hugging flight suit – boasting "mission accomplished" in Iraq.

Whether Perry can ever match the electoral success of Reagan or Bush is uncertain, but cowboy politicians will continue to play a role in US politics as long as they can continue to pander to – and exploit – American males' very real uncertainties.