In the first few days of his presidential launch, we saw all the reasons why Texas Gov. Rick Perry could be a formidable candidate. He delivered a stellar announcement speech in South Carolina that served both as an indictment of President Obama’s economic policies and an argument for his own. He then traveled to New Hampshire, and on to Waterloo, Iowa where, by all accounts, he outshined Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., in her birth town, by working the room like a natural.
Perry’s greatest asset is his confident, loose, freewheeling style, but as we saw yesterday, it’s also a liability.
“If this guy prints more money between now and the election,” Perry said of Fed Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, “I don’t know what y’all would do to him in Iowa, but we — we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas. Printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history is almost treacherous — or treasonous in my opinion.” Video here.
Conservatives can point to double standards that exist, for instance, when Vice President Joe Biden, calls Republicans in Congress “terrorists,” but two wrongs don’t make a right. There’s a responsible way to critique the Fed’s monetary policy, but Perry did it the cowboy way.
John Podhoretz calls Perry’s remarks a “serious unforced error.” I’m not sure how serious it will be this early. Clearly, Perry wasn’t literally calling for violence against Bernanke, and it’s unlikely that this comment will matter a year from now if he’s the nominee. But Podhoretz’s broader point is correct, that “if Perry is going to talk about these things, he needs to do it with care and not like a caller to a radio show.”
In a primary in which the heavily programmed Mitt Romney is the frontrunner, many voters will find Perry’s unscripted nature appealing. But this shoot from the hip style will inevitably cause moments like this. If they’re spread out, it won’t be fatal to his candidacy. But if they become a regular pattern, not only will it raise serious questions about his fitness for the presidency, it will also mean that his campaign will have to waste time putting out fires instead of getting his message across that Obama is holding back the economy, and he’s the man to fix things.
