In his ongoing effort to shine up his tarnished image, Rick Perry took to the Wall Street Journal‘s hallowed op-ed pages over the weekend to stump for the Keystone XL pipeline.

“President Obama wants us to believe he is for jobs, economic opportunity and greater energy security, and his Keystone decision does help meet those goals—for the People’s Republic of China. The American people get nothing,” wrote Perry, who is trying to drive home the point that China is waiting in the wings, eager to siphon off oil from Canada’s tar sands if America doesn’t.

Perry then took a page from his presidential campaign playbook and slammed President Obama for bowing to pressure from “environmental radicals.” The governor added that the president’s claim that he did not have enough time to consider the pipeline was laughable, as the original request was made in September 2008. “Certainly, three-and-half years is more than enough time to make a decision,” he wrote.

The pipeline, Perry maintains, would have “provided a shot in the arm for our nation’s uncertain economy” by creating 20,000 “direct jobs” along the pipeline and “hundreds of thousands of indirect jobs.” Keystone XL would have helped America take a holistic approach to energy, Perry wrote:

In Texas, our approach has been steady and consistent, an “all of the above” energy portfolio that cultivates a vibrant energy market that includes traditional sources, as well as wind, solar and biomass.

We’re still a long way from doing it all with renewables, and we need to continue finding and utilizing new supplies of traditional energy sources, like oil, natural gas, nuclear and coal, if we’re going to keep our economy healthy in the years to come.

That’s what Keystone was bringing us. And that’s what President Obama rejected.

The op-ed generated more than three hundred comments and almost three hundred tweets, but is the governor positioning himself for a chance to be vice president? Likely not. As Dave Montgomery of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram noted, Perry seemed cold on the idea of becoming vice president, telling conservative radio host Mark Davis of WBAP that in that job, “[Y]ou wake up every morning and you go check on the health of the president. And, other than that, there’s not a real role there.”