Visualize Rick Perry, Pt. 2
by Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 10/25/11

With a solid endorsement from Steve Forbes and an idea whose time has come - the flat, fair and free Cut, Cap and Grow plan, Rick Perry's team rolls out. And if I have it right the Texas Rangers are on the verge of winning the World Series tonight. For the first time.

The show of tight jaws unsettled the pundits last week at the debate, but it worked. And Perry wandered the wildernesss of Iowa in tree bark since, gun in hand. What gave Rick, the hunter, that aspect of authenticity was the contrast with Romney's bookishness. And Perry’s jaws were still tight. He was shooting birds with tight jaws. Shooting birds in anger. The pictures were great.

As The New York Times’ Ross Douthat said when Perry first entered the race, quoting a Texas competitor, “Running against Rick Perry is like running against God.” Very few politicians smile naturally . . . Jack Kennedy and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Perry does too. But his anger is authentic and palatable as well. High contrast with New Englanders here of the old line where anger and joy are both eclipsed by form. To the degree where the reader would be chilled to the bone by the pure democratic fairness and Buddhist detachment of three men in a small skiff off Nantucket in the whaling days, drawing straws to determine which would kill and which would be eaten. Seafaring people with names like Coffin. So many cousins, all named Coffin. Such are the dark spirits which still haunt the swamp Yankees. We bury our feelings. We hide our past. We move.

The witch spirit haunts the hills of New Hampshire as well said Nathanial Hawthorne - they come and go; Mitt Romney take note - and sometimes Fenway Park. Still it was with disbelief that we watched the gifted Dominicans, brought in to lift the Curse, praying to Big Papi’s mother in heaven after each home run, win the Pennant from New York. Under a full eclipse off the moon. Really.

Some say they had conjured the dead. Old school in bondo patched trucks listening on radio didn't even watch the World Series or listen because all that mattered to New England was New York v. Boston and the Pennant flag. That was the world, our world, New York and Boston, nothing else in 150 years.

Now this. Texas maybe to win the World Series tonight. And Rick Perry.