Mitch Perry
Although he hasn’t been dominating the headlines like some of the other so-called GOP presidential front runners, Rick Perry made a credible case for himself Friday at a Republican Party forum.
He’s much healthier than during the race four years ago when he was recovering from back surgery. In an extremely energetic, intense, focused and detailed speech he said the pessimism floating through the world could easily be corrected by the U.S. choosing a new leader next year.
Gesturing frequently, Perry focused on many of the world’s problems, and blamed Barack Obama for them all.
“You open up the newspaper, you turn on the TV, turn on the radio … you see individuals being led to a beach in Libya and being beheaded. You see a young Jordanian pilot being burned in front of us. You see these young Christian college kids being murdered, and there’s pessimism in the world.”
Perry said if he was in charge he would have “gotten rid” of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and would have given lethal weapons to the Peshmerga in Iraq to stop ISIS.
“There’s pessimism in the world,” he repeated several times, claiming that people around the world are thinking, “What are we doing?”
He promised that all is not lost. “We lived through Jimmy Carter. We can live through Barack Obama, I promise you!”
Perry boasted about the economic growth that his state saw during the same time that the rest of the country was struggling under the recession, citing how Texas created 1.5 million jobs from December 2007 to December 2014, while the rest of the country lost more than 400,000 jobs.
In closing he said he’s as ready as anyone to handle problems that a president must face. He said it was imperative that the next leader be an executive (a rebuke to Senators Rubio, Paul and Cruz). He also told about events on his watch that he handled without a playbook.
“They didn’t hand me a manual that said ‘Here’s how you deal with the Space Shuttle disintegrating in your state.’ They didn’t handle me a manual when Katrina came into Louisiana, and there were hundreds of thousands of people who were displaced (and came into Texas). They didn’t hand me a manual when all of those people showed up on our borders last year, or for that matter, when Ebola ended up on our shores of America, in Dallas, Texas.”
“That’s executive experience,” he said. “That experience that you get from those years of work are invaluable. And I think that’s what — if I decide to run, the value that I’ll be able to lay in front of the American people …”
Perry then said he was off to return Texas to celebrate his father Ray’s 90th birthday, a World War II tail-gunner who survived 35 missions over Nazi Germany.
“I happen to think today that they look up on us in silent judgement. Do we remain a nation worthy of their sacrifice?,” he said, adding that the country needs to learn the lessons of the Greatest Generation.
“The best days of this country are ahead of us, ” he said. “The best days of the world are ahead of us.”
With that he was off, certainly looking more energetic, focused and ready for a sustained presidential campaign — if he chooses to run next year.
