Let’s start with the bad news for any left-leaning readers of this magazine: no, you haven’t seen the last of Rick Perry. Though the governor did announce on July 8 at a Caterpillar dealership in San Antonio that he wouldn’t seek reelection in 2014, he pledged to serve out the rest of his term. He also happened to mention that over the next eighteen months, he will spend time reflecting on his future. Writers like myself will spend that time reflecting on his past—and grappling with what the Perry legacy really is.
Despite the fact that Perry has been in public office continuously for nearly thirty years and is the state’s longest-serving governor, he has always been a bit puzzling. He was considered unremarkable—a nobody, really—when he was elected to the Texas House, in 1984, as a Democrat. Six years later, when he unseated incumbent Democrat Jim Hightower as agriculture commissioner after switching parties, he became the first Republican ever to win that office in Texas. But even then people saw Perry as a fluke. When he was elected lieutenant governor, in 1998, he seemed to be George W. Bush Junior. And when Perry became governor, in 2000—after W. left Austin to become president—it wasn’t too hard to dismiss him as an empty head of hair.
Even if Texans wanted to dispute that impression, they would be hard-pressed to do so. Despite his years in office, Perry remains an oddly underdeveloped character. Anyone trying to make sense of him will struggle to find the reference points. He didn’t come up through the state’s Republican establishment. His political alliances are apparently mutable. He doesn’t talk much about his family history, beyond the passing reference to the dirt farm in Paint Creek, and has rarely made political arguments from personal experience. Nor does he talk about his life at present all that often. Most Texans wouldn’t recognize his wife, Anita, if they saw her in the grocery store. At times, Perry doesn’t even seem connected to physical reality. He is, at 63, older than he looks. There’s a persistent belief that his hair is unusually good, when in reality it’s nondescript, especially for a politician. The truth is, he likes to jog. He likes to shoot. He loves to be on the campaign trail. And that’s about it.
It’s somewhat admirable, in our era of personality politics, to find a sitting governor of a major state who doesn’t seem destined for Oprah’s couch. On the other hand, it has made it hard to know what Perry cares about on a gut level; he is widely seen as more of a booster than a statesman. His interest in and engagement with policy has never been great, and his enthusiasm for limited government means that, by his own logic, the best place for him is on the sidelines, cheering the accomplishments of the private sector and trying to keep people out of its way.
Perry has always been focused on job creation and economic development, on keeping the taxes low and the budget lean. During his tenure, Texas has surpassed the nation on a staggering range of economic metrics. Since 2000 we have created more new jobs than any other state, and we continue to have one of the lowest tax burdens per capita in the country. Democrats dismiss this largely as luck. During his brief campaign for the Republican presidential nomination, liberal columnists were withering, if largely incorrect, in their takedowns. “What you need to know is that the Texas miracle is a myth,” wrote Paul Krugman, the most visible of the critics, in the New York Times . “And more broadly that Texan experience offers no useful lessons on how to restore national full employment.”
This line of critique fails to make sense. Here are the facts. During Perry’s time as governor, Texas has experienced staggering economic and population growth, which have reinforced each other. In 2000 there were about 21 million people living in Texas; today there are more than 26 million. The state’s total employment number has grown too. In 2000 there were fewer than 10 million jobs in Texas; today there are nearly 12 million. As of 2000, according to the Census Bureau, state GDP was approximately $730 billion; by 2009, it exceeded $1 trillion.
To take a more detailed look, every industry has grown, including the more lucrative ones. Oil and gas has boomed, but so has the high-tech sector. Texas has more minimum-wage workers than it used to, but also more doctors and engineers; between 2001 and 2011, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, 45 percent of Texas’s new jobs were in the highest two wage quartiles. The median household income is a touch below the national figure, but so is the cost of living. The unemployment rate has been below the national average every month for more than six years. In May the median home price in Houston hit $184,900—a record high for that city, but nonetheless an indication that the middle class can still afford to live in Texas. Meanwhile, the state has been relatively sanguine in the face of changes that could easily have triggered tantrums of xenophobia, revolts over spiraling property taxes, or mass episodes of road rage. The question of whether Texas could have done more—to mitigate poverty or invest in our future—is a serious one. But one reason we have occasion to ask it is because the state has done so well in so many respects that the old standard (beat Mississippi!) no longer applies.
It’s been an amazing run, yet it’s not clear how much Perry had to do with it. Texas has enjoyed some tailwinds over the past decade; oil and gas, for example, has done well, although it doesn’t have the disproportionate impact on the state economy that it did before the bust. But the governor has, over the years, offered a few pointers: don’t tax too much, don’t spend too much, keep the regulation predictable,