SIMI VALLEY, Calif. -- Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) is a shrewd dude, a master acquirer of power and ruthless user of it. In ten years as governor he has turned what was widely regarded as a weak office and made into a kind of personal fiefdom not seen in the state since the days of Lyndon Johnson.
But the debut of "The Rick Perry Show" with Wednesday's debate at the Reagan Library has drawn attention to the candidate's knack for continually updating -- and rewriting -- his political allegiances and even his life story. Some of his rivals were preparing to focus on these points both in the NBC debate and on the campaign trail, and his ability to explain the contradictions and changes will go a long way toward deciding whether he is a viable contender -- let alone a winning candidate.
Perry, for one, will need to explain and defend his past life as a Democrat -- and, more specifically, his support for Al Gore's presidential campaign in 1988. In his book Fed Up, Perry goes to great length to trash Gore for his environmental views, even though they were well known back when then-Democrat Perry supported him.
"He won an Oscar," Perry wrote. "And it is all one contrived phony mess that is falling apart under its own weight. Al Gore is a prophet all right, a false prophet of a secular carbon cult, and now even moderate Democrats aren't buying it."
Nowhere in the book does Perry mention that he supported Gore wholeheartedly years ago. On the whole, as one Republican National Committee member told HuffPost's Jon Ward, the blunt book "has a lot of people nervous."
The governor's calling card on the national stage is his furious distrust of the federal government -- and, indeed, of any government that is at a distance from the people it is supposed to serve. And yet Perry's entire life is both a testament to and the beneficiary of government help. He was educated at Texas A&M, which is the recipient of considerable federal research support. He was a pilot in the U.S. Air Force, where he was trained and paid at the federal government's expense. He went into business as a cotton farmer, and benefitted from countercyclical crop-support payments from the feds, not to mention regulatory and promotional spending -- and trade-import restrictions -- that have helped protect one of the most carefully protected agricultural commodities in the country.
And then there is the fact that he has been on the public payroll for most of his life, albeit at the state level.
His relationship with the Bush Family is another story that needs tending and explaining. He was the strongest possible supporter of then-Gov. George W. Bush. Once Bush was elected president and Perry took his place, he spent the first year or two mimicking his predecessor's agenda and operating style. Now, in Fed Up, he criticizes the former president as a big-spending crypto-statist.
"Perry is going to have to answer a whole bunch of questions like this," said the top strategist for one of the other Republican candidates, who declined to be named in advance of the debate. "The big one is this: here we are at the Reagan Library and his first act in national politics was to support a guy who wanted to dismantle the Reagan legacy."