Now, Texas Gov. Rick Perry is seeking to become the first Texan to be elected president without first being vice-president or the son of a president.
Perry’s Texas roots are far deeper than those of either Bush. Despite his years in the Texas oil industry, the elder Bush never lost his New England-bred gentility and Bush the younger, though exhibiting the drawl and the gait of a Texas cowpoke, was also New England-born and schooled at Phillips Academy, Yale and Harvard. By contrast, Perry is a fifth-generation Texan. He earned his boots growing up on a ranch and running a cotton farm with his dad. Like George W. Bush, Perry was a frat boy prankster and yell leader in college, but at Texas A&M, not in the Ivy League.
In many ways, though, Perry is George W. on steroids.
Bush was a National Guard pilot with a spotty attendance record. Perry was an Air Force pilot who flew airlift missions in the U.S., Europe and the Middle East, attaining the rank of captain.
Bush served two terms as governor. Perry became the longest-serving chief executive in Texas history after moving up from lieutenant governor when Bush became president.
Both men are devout evangelical Christians, but Bush kept his religion mostly private while Perry is so public with his beliefs that he recently organized a revival in Houston that drew 30,000 participants to whom he delivered a 12-minute sermon.
Neither man could be called a great intellect, but, where Bush was inarticulate and a bit awkward on the campaign trail, Perry is able to speak his mind in a coherent way and wade into a crowd with gusto.
Bush wanted to privatize Social Security. In his book, Fed Up!, Perry said Social Security and Medicare are unconstitutional, socialistic schemes that usurp the powers of state governments.
Bush pandered to the right wing on guns, abortion, small government and cutting taxes. But he let the federal deficit skyrocket as he followed the single mission that seemed to genuinely engage him, the war on terror. Perry doesn’t merely pander, he believes. He has delighted the pro-gun lobby by brandishing a pistol in public, enraptured the small government crowd by hinting that secession is a solution to federal intrusions and helped turn up the heated Obama-is-a-socialist rhetoric as the Tea Party gathered steam.
Tony Fratto, a highly respected former Bush official, took to Twitter to say much the same thing. And Fratto and Rove weren’t alone; plenty of establishment Republicans with ties to the Bush White House echoed those sentiments privately.
There’s just one problem: It doesn’t appear as though the GOP establishment has learned much about the Tea Party, an amorphous group of movement conservatives who don’t like being told how to think by the establishment.
Witness this comment on Twitter by Dana Loesch, a high-profile Tea Party activist who often appears on CNN: “I will lose respect for [the] Perry campaign if they walk back the Bernanke remarks one inch.” They didn’t; Perry’s aides said simply that he is passionate about fiscal issues.
What’s more, Tea Partiers have said repeatedly that they were nearly as turned off by President Bush and his administration several years ago as they are by Democrats in charge of Washington today. If “the Bushies” are already attacking Perry, it may help separate the new candidate further from the 43rd president and lend him more credibility with conservatives.
A former strategist for Mitt Romney who is close to Bush’s circle suggested that the Bush crowd is nervous about how the former president’s legacy will be treated publicly with a surging Perry in the race. The strategist said the Bush team ought to relax, agreeing that their criticism will only elevate Perry and win him more attention.
It’s easy to see why the Bush team is concerned. In 2007, Perry said that Bush was never a fiscal conservative, and today, he touts himself as the ultimate fiscal conservative.
What’s more, the Perry campaign is not missing an opportunity to distinguish their candidate from Bush in other ways. Perry's wife, Anita, said this at an event in Cedar Rapids on Monday: “A woman asked me today at the fair, she said, ‘Tell me the difference between him and George W. Bush. They’re both Texans.’ And she said, ‘Do you think Rick would be as good a president as President Bush?’ And I said, ‘Well ma’am, he would be better. He’s my husband.’ ”
And Perry himself told CNN that he had a markedly different upbringing than Bush did, which helped define him. “He’s a Yale graduate; I’m a Texas A&M grad,” Perry said Monday.
The Texas governor’s top advisers have long maintained that there is no feud with Bush, or they chalk it up to staff rivalries. Perry's chief of staff, Ray Sullivan, said to RCP: “The Bush issue is exaggerated in my view. The governor and president have a good relationship. A number of our senior staff worked for George W. Bush.”
But, he continued, “President Bush is not running for reelection. President Obama is. Governor Perry is running to defeat President Obama.
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