Rick Perry really the Republican who can win in 2012?

As expected, Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, has announced that he is running for president. And we already know what his campaign will be about: faith in miracles.
Some of these miracles will involve things that you’re liable to read in the Bible. But if he wins the Republican nomination, his campaign will probably center on a more secular theme: the alleged economic miracle in Texas, which, it’s often asserted, sailed through the Great Recession almost unscathed thanks to conservative economic policies. And Mr. Perry will claim that he can restore prosperity to America by applying the same policies at a national level.


So what you need to know is that the Texas miracle is a myth, and more broadly that Texan experience offers no useful lessons on how to restore national full employment.


It’s true that Texas entered recession a bit later than the rest of America, mainly because the state’s still energy-heavy economy was buoyed by high oil prices through the first half of 2008. Also, Texas was spared the worst of the housing crisis, partly because it turns out to have surprisingly strict regulation of mortgage lending.


Despite all that, however, from mid-2008 onward unemployment soared in Texas, just as it did almost everywhere else.


In June 2011, the Texas unemployment rate was 8.2 percent. That was less than unemployment in collapsed-bubble states like California and Florida, but it was slightly higher than the unemployment rate in New York, and significantly higher than the rate in Massachusetts. By the way, one in four Texans lacks health insurance, the highest proportion in the nation, thanks largely to the state’s small-government approach. Meanwhile, Massachusetts has near-universal coverage thanks to health reform very similar to the “job-killing” Affordable Care Act.


So where does the notion of a Texas miracle come from? Mainly from widespread misunderstanding of the economic effects of population growth.


For this much is true about Texas: It has, for many decades, had much faster population growth than the rest of America — about twice as fast since 1990. Several factors underlie this rapid population growth: a high birth rate, immigration from Mexico, and inward migration of Americans from other states, who are attracted to Texas by its warm weather and low cost of living, low housing costs in particular.


He also has a catchy line on what’s likely to be the critical issue of the campaign: jobs. Texas has weathered the struggling economy particularly well, and he forcefully reminded his audience on Saturday with a vindication of his low-tax, low-spending record in the Lone Star State.


But his strengths are offset by massive liabilities.


On content, most of his speech was over-the-top yet familiar boilerplate about how America is the last hope for the world, how Washington is the enemy, how real Americans solve problems — the last point rendered heavily ironic by the right-wing ideological tenor of his address, which all but ruled out one sure-fire way to solve problems in the capital: reasonable compromise. Candidates for federal office often run against Washington. In a very anti-incumbent election year, this message could work even better than usual. Yet bashing Washington is easy, and it doesn’t substitute for substance on policy. But if Perry tries to move beyond rhetoric, particularly in the general election, he will have to explain some of the far-outside-the-mainstream views he has espoused on things such as Medicare, Social Security and federal power. Even his catchy line on jobs reveals an anti-tax orthodoxy — no more on anyone at any time — that places Perry right of the average GOP voter.


For all his talents on stage, Perry also has a way of letting his mouth get ahead of his brain — or at least one hopes that’s what is happening. Before flirting with running for president, Perry was perhaps best known for speculating about Texan secession from the United States. He implicitly addressed this in his speech on Saturday: “I know I’ve talked a lot about Texas here in the last little bit. I’m a Texan and proud of it. But first and foremost I’m an incredibly proud American.” You can bet the secession incident will come up again, despite his preemptive rebuttal. But Perry’s greatest weakness might end up being the alarming comments he decides not to walk back.


Republicans who think Perry could be the savior they’ve been searching for over the last few months should think carefully about whether this politician can really win a national election that will be decided by the center, not by the Tea Party.