LAS VEGAS — Rick Perry wants you to know just how much he knows.
The former Texas governor, who spent 14 years at the helm in Austin before retiring in January, infamously flamed out of the 2012 Republican presidential primary campaign when he proposed during a debate to shutter three wasteful government agencies and then couldn’t remember which three he intended to close down, saying sheepishly: “Oops.”
That was the old Perry.
He’s finally healthy, and he has spent the past three years boning up on foreign and domestic policy, and is hoping to parlay a newfound expertise on international affairs into an underdog’s victory in 2016. Perry, 65, is one of just two Republican contenders to have run for president once before and the only contender with military service on his resume.
Combined with a Texas economy he presided over as governor that kept the national economy afloat during the recession, Perry and his supporters are confident that he can surprise the naysayers. Last month, on the eve of addressing a gathering of the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas, Perry discussed his agenda for the presidency with the Washington Examiner.
He expects to declare for the presidency around June 1. The interview was edited for length and clarity.
Washington Examiner: Day one of your presidency, what do you do to immediately alter course of U.S. foreign policy?
Perry: The executive order is important and I would suggest one of the first things that I did, if not the first thing, from the time I took my hand off the Bible until the inaugural balls would be to sign an executive order wiping out this agreement that it appears we’re going to have with Iran. It’s a bad deal. It’s a bad deal for the Middle East, it’s a bad deal for Israel. I mean, all it will do is guarantee a Sunni bomb. Proliferation that will occur from this president signing a deal with Iran the way I understand it today is a really bad document.
Examiner: What does it mean that this is a deal we’re also doing with other world powers and we don’t know if we can get them to also back out?
Perry: Some of the world powers that are appearing to support this, I don’t think that we have to follow their lead. I’m more interested in having a coalition with our Arab allies than I am with Russia and China on this issue. If we have to go our own way without those UN powers, if you will, I don’t have a problem with that. … I’m really tired with the United States, with this administration in particular, following the lead of countries that don’t have our interest in mind.
We’re negotiating with Iran. There are people [saying] Iran’s over there fighting ISIS for you. Well, OK, that doesn’t change my opinion of Iran at all. They’re also trying to deliver weaponry to the Houthis in Yemen. Why should we believe Iran is going to be trustworthy on this negotiation when we can’t trust them to not send weapons to the Houthis? This is all beyond me that we’ve allowed ourselves to get into a situation where our allies don’t trust us, our adversaries know that they can challenge us, and there are no red lines anymore.
Examiner: Israel would probably be reassured by your move to cancel the Iran deal. What else do you envision doing to send a signal to the Israelis that the days of President Obama are over?
Perry: There’s 25 years of history between myself and Israel. I signed a memorandum of understanding with them [related to] the agriculture industry, I think in 1992, if memory serves me correct. That would be 25 years worth of clear relationship with Israel. Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu and I have known each other for a substantial period of time. When we have been in to Benny Gantz, the defense minister. I mean, these are people that we know that speak candidly with us. We’ve got some relationships there that are both personal and professional that go back for years. I would suggest in January of 2017, if I’m the person that’s taking my left hand off the Bible that there will be a great sigh of relief, not just in Israel but in the Middle East as a whole because they will know that America will be America again.
Examiner: What is your position on moving the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem?
Perry: That is clearly where it needs to be. I’ve had that decision for some time.
Examiner: What does the U.S. do under your presidency to send a message to Vladimir Putin that he can’t walk into any country he wants?
Perry: You do three things. One is, you really make the sanctions work — swift banking [sanctions] dealing with his oligarchs. There’s a real economic price with the sanctions. You sign as many LNG contracts as you can to deliver Gulf Coast liquefied natural gas into the European theater, working with Poland to expedite the Baltic import facility that they’re working on. And, you clearly send a message to our European allies that they can no longer be held hostage by this guy. And the third thing is to, obviously, you put our military forces close in to that region, whether it’s in the Baltics or whether it’s into some of the NATO [countries].
Examiner: Send lethal aide to Ukraine?
Perry: Yes.
Examiner: Immigration has been in the news, recently with Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker saying that legal immigration policy should also be dependent upon its impact on American workers’ wages. Your reaction?
Perry: I think he’s missing some economics here. Because the way you raise the workers’ wages in this country is by lowering corporate tax rates. I mean, every accountant will tell you that you lower the corporate tax rate by 10 percent you’ll get five to 10 percent increase. I mean that’s the quickest way, is by corporate tax policy. You couple that with energy policy that uses North American energy, and I’m talking about Canada, the United States and Mexico, obviously, [Keystone] XL pipeline, and when these crude prices get back to $60-$65 you’re going to see a virtual explosion of — which is also going to have an impact on immigration, I might add, in a way that I don’t think people have really thought about.
Examiner: Can you elaborate?
Perry: I think you’re going to see the potential to move a substantial amount of people from the United States back to Mexico because there’s going to be some really good paying jobs and they’re going to get to go home. So, there’s a dynamic from that perspective.
But the way you raise wages is by economic policy. We created 1.5 million jobs in Texas from ’07 through 2014. The rest of the country lost 400,000 jobs. It wasn’t an accident, there’s some real theory here that now is no longer a theory, it’s actual economic policy at work. Go look and see what the state of Texas did on tax policy, on regulatory policy, on tort reform and on – we went from 27th in the nation in 2003 on high school graduation rates, to the second-highest graduation rates in the country. We actually had the highest graduation rate for African Americans and Hispanics. That’s how you impact wages, not by manipulating some immigration policies.
There is an experiment that’s gone on during this decade in the 13th largest economy in the world, it’s a place called Texas, and it worked. You implement that across this country and that’s how you raise wages and that’s how you get people back to work.
Examiner: Day one of your presidency, your first move on domestic policy?
Perry: [Keystone] XL pipeline. Open it up. The message is going to be clear: America and our North American allies, Mexico and Canada, are going to prosper because of energy policy that’s coming out of Washington, D.C., that’s going to be all-of-the-above energy policy, but it puts people to work and here’s the result of that, when you have that energy policy in place that’s all of the above, and we’re going to use our energy in this country, we couple it with a corporate tax policy that lowers it and you give incentives to manufacturers to come in, because if you, when you have that prolific energy resource, you’re going to drive down the cost of electricity, coupled with corporate tax policy, massive manufacturing boom in this country like you’ve never seen before.
Examiner: And your first 100 days agenda — what are your other top priorities?
Perry: It actually backs up before you take the oath of office, and that is to recruit the men and women who share your philosophy, people who really know how to make government work, who aren’t going to get sandbagged, who have had pretty extensive executive experience, and that’s developing your Cabinet, and even your sub-cabinet level people and knowing who those individuals are really early on in the process, where, the day you’re sworn in, they are hitting the ground running and this country knows where you’re going to be taking it, because of the quality and the philosophy of the people that you’re going to be announcing.
