Next to a possible future United States President, Evan Couture of Greenland was all smiles Sunday afternoon.
“It was a great experience,” he said after he and his parents, Len and Michelle, had lunch with Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who formally announced his candidacy for President in New Hampshire Saturday. “It was overwhelming.”
Perry briefly attended the New Hampshire Energy Freedom Festival at McIntyre ski area in Manchester, which attracted about 350 people to an event designed to provide a fun day out for members of the New Hampshire Energy Forum.
Perry said he entered the race out of “a duty to serve my country. And our country is in trouble.”
When asked in a swarm of reporters about fellow Republican primary contender and U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann’s victory in Saturday’s Iowa straw poll, Perry said he believed that people were not voting out of anger.
“I think there’s a lot of frustration,” Perry said. “People want their elected officials to listen to them. It seems like we have a federal government that’s not working for the people. It’s the other way around. I share their frustration. I want to make Washington as inconsequential in our lives as possible.
The last part is crucial. Perry and his advisers believe that the Republican field has lacked a candidate who can unite the GOP's factions - Christian conservatives, business interests and small-government enthusiasts - the way Ronald Reagan did. Perry aims to fill the void.
That means projecting confidence, strength and optimism that offers simple answers voters can grab hold of in a time of great anxiety and uncertainty.
"We know the greatest darkness comes just before the morning," Perry told 30,000 evangelical Christians a week ago, part of the run-up to his campaign announcement. Days later in San Antonio, he was even more explicit, telling a legislative conference that while "our fiscal house is built on shifting sands. . . . This West Texas optimist sees our brightest hour just around the corner."
The first step to securing the Republican nomination is to fend off rivals for the devotion of tea party activists and religious conservatives who control the process in the early nominating states.
Bob Vander Plaats, a religious-right activist in Iowa, said Christian conservatives are looking for a candidate "our base could quickly coalesce around." Perry's plan is to attract voters from Michele Bachmann and emerge by the South Carolina primary as the chief alternative to national front-runner Mitt Romney.
Perry's record is not without blemish. And his Republican opponents are prepared to argue that he's not the conservative he claims to be.
They will pick at his lifetime in public office, reports of cronyism, immigration policies that could alienate the right, a mandate to vaccinate preteen girls, a government initiative to take private property for a massive toll road project.
The Perry team aims to dismiss that with a relentless focus on jobs. Perry's campaign strategist, Dave Carney, said in an interview that the 2012 presidential race will be a "macro-election" dominated by the economy.
In large part, Carney plans to take the blueprint of Perry's re-election last year - denouncing a spendthrift Washington and touting his economic record in Texas - to the national stage.
When Perry's opponents attacked his policies, the governor kept talking about jobs, the economy, and freeing the state from Washington's constraints.
Last August, Carney explained how Perry's re-election message would go: "Nothing's getting better, it just gets worse. You can look at it anywhere in the country - Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio - where people have made up their mind. They're not listening to little micro-arguments. This is a macro-election. Whether its jobs or debt or spending, it's crystal clear."
His Christian prayer rally at Houston's Reliant Stadium was a discrete appeal to politically important religious conservatives who want a government that reflects their values, not only on abortion and gay rights but also on spending and debt.
Their moral universe includes not just social, but fiscal issues. Living in debt has become the new living in sin.
"There is a sense that there is a right and proper way in economics as well as personal behavior, and we've collectively as a nation strayed away from that," Green said. "And we need somebody who will have an absolute confidence that he or she can get us back."
Running a general election campaign would require Perry to pivot from an appeal to social conservatives whose extreme views could turn off moderate voters.
Part of the problem with Perry's economic message is that much of the state's job creation has been a shifting of jobs-from California, for example. Business-friendly policies and geographical advantages largely predate Perry, so he's less the cause than the beneficiary.
Carney's blueprint for winning a general election would cast Perry in sharp contrast to Obama on economic issues. He believes voters interpret the president's cerebral and nuanced style as indecisiveness.
If the economy is still struggling next year, Carney believes, the only thing that counts is whether voters believe there's somebody who will fix it. So Carney plans to project Perry in bold colors - direct, assertive and optimistic.
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