But he’s not a policy guy. At times, it’s difficult to even glean a coherent ideology from him. Yes, he’s generally conservative; a times, he’s extremely conservative. But the details are tough to pin down. In fact, his three major proposals—pitching toll roads built with eminent domain, requiring a vaccine for an STD and passing a new tax that created a permanent budget deficit—aren’t exactly “conservative.”

If you watch Perry long enough, you realize he doesn’t sweat the details. The specifics of his positions are often fungible depending on what’s politically advantageous at the moment. For instance, in 2011, as Perry prepared to run for president, we saw him take more hard-line conservative positions on immigration and government spending.

In his folksy, delegate-the-details approach to governing, Perry will undoubtedly remind some voters of George W. Bush. But Perry may be even less interested in policy than Bush. By most accounts, Bush genuinely cared about education reform. Perry? In 2005, he proposed an education reform plan so unworkable that the GOP-dominated Texas House voted it down 126-0.