On June 16, in the air-conditioned lobby of Trump Tower in New York City, Trump rode down an escalator and launched his own campaign for president, touting the opposite: his lack of experience in government. “Politicians are all talk, no action,” Trump riffed. “Nothing’s gonna get done.”
Over the next few weeks, Perry stayed the course he had set over years of preparation to run for president again: delivering detailed policy speeches and proposals, presenting himself as the adult in the room.
The aim of that strategy was to reintroduce Perry, whose spacey debate performance in 2011, when he could not remember a third federal agency he would eliminate, seared him in the minds of voters for all the wrong reasons.
But Republican voters at this moment appear not to want sober policy prescriptions or dense government résumés. They want Trump.
“With the phenomenon that is Donald Trump, there was just no room,” said Walter Whetsell, a senior adviser to Perry in South Carolina. “There was no air. There was no oxygen for someone like Rick Perry to get a second chance.”
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