He entered the campaign late but high hopes and the support of other
governors, senators and wealthy businessmen needed to jump-start a bid.
Mr Perry was in his third term as governor of Texas, a state that, as he never
failed to remind an audience, was the 13th largest economy in the world. He
boasted a record of creating jobs – although many were poorly paid – while
the rest of the country struggled with recession. A born-again Christian, he
was conservative enough to satisfy the party’s activist base, while his
up-from-the-bootstraps biography was perfect presidential material.
But after shooting straigh to the top of the polls he waned. The
relentlessness and constant exposure of the national arena simply proved too
much for him, as it had for other heavily-tipped hopefuls in 2008 Rudy
Giuliani, such as former New York mayor, and Fred Thompson, the Law
Order television actor and former Tennessee senator.
In a radio interview last week Mr Perry again stumbled when asked which
federal agencies he would chop, adding the department of interior but
omitting education.
By then his hopes of becoming president had disappeared over the Texan
horizon.
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