Maybe you've seen the latest issue of Newsweek on newsstands -- that cover's hard to miss. It's kind of the all-Texas issue, matter of fact, with Evan Smith contributing this piece about the hubbub over the high-school social-studies curriculum and Daniel Gross's essay about how "the Texas turnaround may help lead the nation's economic turnaround."
But the Rick Perry piece, featuring an interview conducted by Texas Tribune editor Smith, is the centerpiece of the package. It paints Democratic gubernatorial contender Bill White as "President Obama without the good looks and charisma" and Perry as, um, "messiah" and "redeemer." As in:
Raised in a ranch house with no running water in the West Texas town of Paint Creek, yell leader at Texas A&M, Air Force pilot, longest serving governor in Texas history. Ruggedly handsome in a Marlboro Man sort of way, with a rich mane of brown hair, slightly tinged with silver gray. Perry, 60, stands for less government and more growth, for freedom and against bureaucracy, for Texas and against Washington. It's a message that has made him a very popular politician in Texas, particularly among conservative white males.Here's Smith's full Q&A with the governor, which was posted this morning.
And if he's good for Texas, why not America? Could Perry be the second coming of Ronald Reagan, the plain-spoken man from the West who presided over a new "Morning in America" by cutting taxes, reducing government (well, promising to), and standing tall against the nation's enemies? As the tea-party movement gains momentum, as more Americans are mad as hell and not going to take it anymore, Perry is their kind of hero, an avatar of a lost age that could come again, if only Washington politicians and other undesirables were put in their place.
