Rick Perry!

The man who has been governor of Texas since pterodactyls roamed the plains took his leave at the State Capitol this week. He is not saying anything for sure about running for president. Mum’s the word until springtime. However, he recently told a reporter that if voters want to break from the Obama era, “I am a very clear and compelling individual to support.”

Wow, the Republican race is getting to be like one of those crime shows where the detectives have to paste pictures all over the wall so they can keep the suspects straight. So many old friends popping up this month — Mitt Romney and now Rick Perry. The man who drove to Canada with the family dog strapped to the car roof and the man who claims he shot a coyote while jogging. The animal lobby had better get out there and see how Jeb Bush feels about wolf hunting.

Almost everybody has a Rick Perry favorite moment. For 99 percent, it’s probably the dreaded “oops” debate when he announced that as president he was going to shutter three federal agencies — and then could only think of two.

And, yeah, that one was pretty good. However, I still cherish a television interview Perry did a few years earlier with Evan Smith of The Texas Tribune in which he defended abstinence-only sex education despite the state’s astronomical rates of teenage pregnancy.