Rick Perry’s Unlikely Third Act

Twenty months later, Perry is less a star and more a supporting actor in Trump’s Washington. For some pols, energy secretary would be a tough third act. After 15 years as the governor of one of the largest and most robust states in the country, and two national campaigns for president, heading up one of the forgotten departments of the federal government might feel like a downgrade. But Perry seems to relish the job—traveling to international conferences, visiting the department’s dozens of research labs, and promoting America’s energy industry.

Perry was one of the draws at the World Gas Conference in Washington in June, where he gave the keynote address at the industry-sponsored confab. Sandwiched between performances by a marching band and the Harlem Globetrotters, Perry’s speech was standard boilerplate about American natural gas production and market innovation. But it was a hit with conference attendees. “Great speech,” said more than one person, as Perry surveyed the exhibit hall afterwards, and I think they meant it.

It’s at conferences like this one that Perry is able to let his retail-politician flag fly. Before one meeting, his Canadian counterpart, natural resources minister Jim Carr, approached him like an old pal. Perry wrapped an arm around Carr and gave the minister a friendly shake. “This is a good man,” Perry declared. Carr told me it’s a “great honor” to work with the former Texas governor, adding that the two men have “common interests” on both the professional and personal levels. “We talk about kids, grandkids, hockey,” Carr said.

Their mutual affinity looks and feels genuine, which is all the more remarkable given that their bosses—President Trump and Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau—had recently engaged in a public dispute over trade and protectionism following the G7 summit. Days after the gas conference, Canada would follow through on its threat to impose retaliatory tariffs against the United States for its tariffs on Canadian goods. Back in May, Trump reportedly brought up Canada’s involvement in the War of 1812 and the burning of the White House by British troops during a tense phone conversation with Trudeau.

Perry would rather slap backs in person than slap back at critics on Twitter. Those close to him call Perry a collaborator and a team player, someone who looks for ways to make connections with people. At the conference, in a meeting with the energy minister of Azerbaijan, Perry mentioned that his wife had been to the capital city of Baku. Earlier in the week, in an encounter with Russian energy minister Alexander Novak before a meeting of Pacific-region government and business leaders, Perry did his level best to spark a conversation. “I don’t love cold weather, but I would like to come to St. Petersburg,” said the lifelong Texan. Novak, listening through a translator, nodded sternly.

Perry thrives in this realm, connecting industry leaders and government ministers while promoting America’s energy resources. It’s the closest his job at the department gets to his previous role as chief salesman for Texas. When I interviewed him four years ago in the governor’s office in Austin, he was almost frenetic, jumping up to take phone calls with corporate executives in an effort to bring them to Texas. “I still think I’ve got a passion for what I do,” he told me then, as he looked ahead to his final year in office. “I’ve got 11 months left. I’ve got a deal that I’m working on. I’ve got lots of deals that we’re going to be working on.” In this sense, Perry was Trump before Trump—presenting himself as a consummate dealmaker.

But for a number of reasons, Republican primary voters weren’t convinced, either in 2012 or 2016, that the governor of the largest and most economically vibrant red state ought to be their presidential nominee. Those campaigns were the only ones Perry ever lost. After dropping out in 2016, he told his wife, Anita, that he was retired from politics.

“My father gave me some really good advice,” Perry says. Ray Perry, who had been a longtime commissioner and school board member in Haskell County in rural Texas, died in April 2017, shortly after his son was installed as energy secretary. “He said one of the great gifts of a person in public service is to know when to leave and to leave still feeling comfortable that you’ve got a little bit to give.”

That’s where Perry fils aimed to be in the fall of 2016. He and Anita were on a trip to Napa Valley, enjoying retirement, on Election Day. “I didn’t know the outcome of the election until the next morning. My phone had blown up,” he says. “I went to sleep rather early.”

Perry felt he still had more than a little bit to give and quickly reached out to Trump to offer his help. “I wanted to give the president the opportunity to have people like me,” he says—people with some actual experience governing, that is. At Trump Tower, Trump didn’t have much to say about the responsibilities at the department he wanted Perry to run. “We probably spent less than five minutes talking about the Department of Energy and the portfolio there,” Perry says. “He already knew I already knew that, by and large. He asked about other people.” Who did Perry think might be a good fit for other cabinet-level agencies? What did he think of so-and-so for such-and-such job?

Perry wouldn’t divulge who the president-elect discussed that day, but needless to say, some of those Trump appointees haven’t turned out so well. Scandals, disputes with the White House, and incompetence have defined the Trump cabinet, which is why Perry sticks out as a rare exception. There have been no signs of impending revolt from career employees at the Energy Department, nor have left-wing groups successfully made much noise about Perry’s policies. Unlike Rex Tillerson and Jeff Sessions, Perry has had no public tiffs with President Trump. Nor has he committed the sort of ethical lapses or boneheaded maneuvering that doomed Scott Pruitt, Tom Price, David Shulkin. Aides and friends of Perry say that’s where his decades of experience in politics have benefited him most.

When I ask him what sets him apart from his scandal-ridden colleagues in the cabinet, Perry points out that the “easiest story for a journalist to write” is about improper flights by a politician. Perry would know—he used the issue of taxpayer-funded private flights against his 2010 primary opponent in the gubernatorial election, Kay Bailey Hutchison, and was dinged himself during his first presidential run, in late 2011, for taking some official flights paid for by industry lobbyists. As Perry jokes, he made all his mistakes long before the national spotlight was on him.

That’s not to say he has avoided controversy entirely. But it’s been controversy of the most boring kind, over policy, and he’s gotten most of the heat from free-market conservatives. Last fall, the Energy Department released a report on power grid resiliency. Perry used the report to urge the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to approve a new price-setting regulation for electricity markets, one that would financially guarantee older coal and nuclear plants their baseload capacity as newer energy resources begin competing (often with government support) in the marketplace. Among the arguments Perry deployed was that national security would be threatened if underfunded power plants were forced to shut down.

But experts at conservative institutions like the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute blasted the proposed rule as a “massive subsidy” that was tantamount to “tipping the scale” toward coal and nuclear. Industry competitors also hated the plan, as did fossil fuel opponents on the left. And the regulators at FERC weren’t convinced; in January, they unanimously rejected the rule, a blow to the administration’s efforts to support and revive coal power. Perry characterizes FERC’s decision as part of a national conversation about energy resiliency, and his advisers make a fair point—there’s no such thing as a truly competitive market when it comes to electricity, so government has a role to play whether it likes it or not.

The resilience rule failure, Perry’s most high-profile to date, highlights a frustration the former governor says he has experienced with the way Washington works: Things happen too slowly and get mired in bureaucratic processes. It’s a frustration he shares with Trump. But the president also has a tendency to get out in front of the rest of his administration, which sometimes touches on issues in Perry’s wheelhouse. One Saturday in late June, Trump tweeted that he had spoken to King Salman of Saudi Arabia. Citing “turmoil and disfunction [sic] in Iran and Venezuela,” Trump announced that he’d asked the Arab monarch to increase his oil-rich country’s production by two million barrels. “He has agreed!” Trump said. A few hours later, the White House issued a statement clarifying that Saudi Arabia had two million barrels in spare oil capacity and would be “ready” to increase output if needed. It was a small but important mistake which, had it happened when markets were open, could have caused significant confusion.

Perry says he was not briefed on the conversation with the Saudis but dismissed concerns that Trump’s mangling of what the Saudi king agreed to would have had any real consequences for energy markets. “It makes total sense to me for the president to try to influence, where he can, to keep gas prices down when Americans are traveling—if there’s something we can do within reasonable limits,” he says.

The genesis of Trump’s conversation with King Salman was a meeting weeks earlier when Perry discussed with the president how international political events were threatening to raise oil prices. “He wanted to know why crude prices were at the level they were,” Perry said. “And I shared with him that it’s a really unique time in world history from the standpoint of oil production. You have Venezuela on the brink of collapse. You have issues in Angola.” The problem for American output, Perry told the president, was a lack of pipeline capacity to bring crude oil to market. “All of those together versus the demand in the world, which is going up, are putting pressure, and it’s a straight-up supply and demand issue. And I think that helps him understand a little better why we got these pressures on,” he said.

The benefit Perry brings to the Trump administration isn’t just his experience in government—the president seems genuinely to value and listen to his advice, at least in a few areas. Trump considered replacing David Shulkin at Veterans Affairs with Perry before the secretary said publicly he wanted to stay at Energy. But Perry says the president asks him “on a regular basis” about veterans issues, since, as a former Air Force pilot, Perry has experience working with veterans’ advocacy groups. Trump has also consulted Perry on some of the prison reform ideas pushed by White House adviser and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Perry has been careful not to exploit his closeness with the president nor any of the perks of power. Unlike Scott Pruitt, who before he resigned from the Environmental Protection Agency effectively had a permanent lunch reservation at the White House Mess, Perry says he’s only eaten at the West Wing a handful of times. He’s all but absent from the Washington social scene as well. He and his wife took National Economic Council director Larry Kudlow out to dinner recently, and he made a notable appearance at this year’s White House Easter Egg Roll. But Perry says he went to enough black-tie events as governor and he’s not itching to do more. He maintains a low profile in Washington during the week, taking walks around Arlington National Cemetery in the evening before retiring to a nearby condominium. On weekends when he’s not traveling internationally, he returns home to Texas.

As far as “retirement” jobs go, Perry’s is pretty good. But does he have the desire to do anything else—perhaps fill a different cabinet post or run for office again? Last year, Perry publicly ruled out a primary challenge to Texas senator Ted Cruz, who is up for reelection. And there’s little to suggest Republicans will be clamoring for Perry to run for president a third time in 2024, when he’ll be 74.

“I’m pretty open that this is my last bite at the apple in terms of public service,” Perry says when I ask him what might come next. “But I also will remind people that I said that before.”