The former New Mexico governor and extreme presidential long-shot puts on the record what a fair number of Republicans in Washington are saying privately:

For all the speculation about Rick Perry’s presidential potential, Gary Johnson feels certain the campaign would fall flat — if only because America isn’t ready to put another Texas governor in the White House.


“Have you ever heard Rick Perry talk? I thought when I listened to him talk, I thought he was doing a parody of George Bush. And I was looking around to see if anyone else saw the humor in that. And it wasn’t. It was just the way that he talked,” said Johnson, the former New Mexico governor who’s running his own long shot campaign.

That’s not Perry’s only problem: he’s another in a long list of “status quo,” politicians focused more on “fluff” than specifics, Johnson said in a conversation with POLITICO on Thursday, explaining why he’s running his own long shot presidential campaign against them.