BORROWING from the Book of Ecclesiastes, with yellow bulldozers providing the backdrop, Rick Perry, Texas’s Republican governor, told a group of supporters in San Antonio this week that there is “a time to weep, a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance”. But if there is a time to declare a second bid for the Republican presidential nomination, this was not it. Instead, the governor merely said he would not seek re-election next year. “Any future considerations,” he added, would be announced “in due time”.

Mr Perry has perched over Texan politics since George W. Bush left for the White House in 2000. His office is weak, but he has stuffed state agencies with loyalists; their influence will outlast his tenure. He has also presided over a booming economy; Texas, he crows, accounts for a third of American net job creation in the past decade (see chart). Since 2007 unemployment has been below the national average even as the population has shot up. (Naysayers point to low health-insurance rates and cash-starved schools.)

Mr Perry’s reign has long kept a lid on anyone else’s ambitions. “It’s like a big house with only one bathroom, and daddy’s been in there too long,” says Jason Stanford, a Democratic strategist. The first beneficiary of Mr Perry’s decision will be Greg Abbott, the attorney-general, who is likely to run for and win the governorship next year thanks to his record of getting angry with the federal government. Other statewide races will be lively. James Henson at the University of Texas, Austin, expects splits to emerge among the state’s Republicans. The sudden success of Ted Cruz, a hard-edged conservative who won a Senate race last year, may spawn imitators.

America’s attention last turned Texas-wards in June, when Wendy Davis, a Democratic state senator, filibustered an anti-abortion bill. Mr Perry thwarted her by calling a special legislative session to pass the law, which should happen soon. The governor has always been pro-life, even if his priority has been the economy. But the abortion spat gives him a chance to court social conservatives nationwide. Why might he want to do that?

To mount a serious second presidential bid, Mr Perry must muddy voters’ memories of the first one. A late entrant to the Republican race, in August 2011, Mr Perry briefly led the polls but soon fizzled. Accusing the head of the Federal Reserve of treason was not statesmanlike. Nor was suggesting that Turkey was led by terrorists. And few were impressed by Mr Perry’s “Oops” moment, when he forgot the name of a department he planned to eliminate.

But his campaign was already faltering by then. Primary voters had booed his defence of a Texas law lowering university fees for young illegal immigrants. The Republican electorate of 2016 may be less hostile to such views—the coming House debate on immigration will clarify the party’s stance—but by then other candidates, such as Marco Rubio, may be better placed to take advantage. More broadly, the potential 2016 bench looks far stronger than the weaklings who thrashed Mr Perry in 2012.

Still, Mr Perry will have a fine story to tell on jobs and growth, particularly if America’s recovery fails to gather speed. Unlike the previous time he has left himself plenty of time to prepare, and he has a good record as a campaigner (notwithstanding 2011’s hiccups). In April he said he would make his intentions clear by the end of the year. For now, watch out for visits to early-primary states, or even trips abroad, though probably not to Turkey.