And yet, despite all the factors auguring a run, Perry remains further from hurling himself into the fray than some assume. Though he has said he is now “thinking about” getting in, he has also said that his contemplations are not “too far into any type of formative thought process.” (If the way Perry talks about thinking makes you wonder about his capacity for thinking, you are not alone.) What that means, according to people close to the governor, is that Team Perry has not even started any rigorous evaluation of the elements that he would weigh in his decision—in terms of fund-raising, organization, and so on. Perry’s advisers also caution that the odds are no better, and possibly worse, than 50-50 that he will wind up in the race.
Which, if you think about it, isn’t really all that surprising. Running for president is a hellish business, even for those who have wanted desperately, achingly to be commander-in-chief since they could lace up their shoes. And that emphatically does not describe Rick Perry—a man who, unlike so many Republicans who claim to be anti-Washington but in fact would love nothing more than to call 1600 Pennsylvania home, genuinely seems to despise the place and everything it stands for.
Yet even if the governor does stay out, this moment of highly pitched pining for Perry has revealed something important. Not just that Republicans are unsatisfied with their current field but that one of the key things fueling that discontent is the absence on the part of the candidates of a set of prescriptions remotely commensurate, substantively or politically, with the scale of the jobs crisis. Of course, as distressed as this makes Republicans, it is, no doubt, a source of comfort for Obama—except that he has no big ideas on jobs, either, which is why he continues to be at risk of winding up unemployed himself.
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