Doer Not A Talker

Once again, someone has written a truly significant and to the point essay on the essence of Rick Perry.  Appearing in The Damn Dirty Rhino, Walt, the poster of this magnificent essay is right on the money about Rick Perry - the man.  His observations are excellent.  We realize that this spot on essay has made the rounds, but just in case some of our readers have not had a chance to read it, here it is.  Two Sisters are delighted to bring it to you.  Enjoy!  For more interesting and well written articles please visit The Damn Dirty Rhino.
Two Sisters From The Right


Having finally watched the full debate . . . . . from Saturday night, I can see why the reactions in my Twitter feed were so positive toward Rick Perry’s performance. It was undoubtedly his best performance to date. It was also his most authentic debate performance to date. In previous outings, I’ve gotten the sense — amply vindicated by his lapse in the Wednesday night debate — that he’s been stifled. It was hard to put a finger on what was holding him back until I finally had the chance to watch the Saturday night debate.


And then it hit me.


Up until now, Rick Perry has been playing by his competitors’ rules. On a stage with eight other candidates, give or take, Perry has seemed as though he was trying to project the sense that he had the qualities that others have forwarded as their strengths instead of relying on his own. It’s as though he’s been listening to Mitt Romney, Jon Huntsman, and Newt Gingrich effortlessly recite policy minutiae and felt the need to try and project some semblance of wonkery when the man simply is not a wonk.


Rick Perry is a leader, not an egghead. He strikes me as the kind of man who takes in information, distills it down to its essence, runs it through a three-stage filter of ideology, personal conviction and horse sense, and then acts accordingly. He doesn’t retain data points the way Jon Huntsman and Mitt Romney do, nor try to fit the unruly and confounding details of contemporary challenges into a world historical context the way Newt does. He’s a man for whom the retention of details is entirely secondary to their actual, real-world implications.


The difference between Rick Perry and Romney and Huntsman is roughly equivalent to the difference between a mechanic and a mechanical engineer. When your car breaks down and you need to get to work, you don’t call upon a mechanical engineer unless you want to spend a week waiting for schematics and exploded diagrams to come in before the problem can be diagnosed and remedied. The difference between Perry and Newt is the difference between a gunnery sergeant and a military historian. When you need to take a hill and you’re taking artillery fire, you don’t call upon a military historian unless you want to know the implications of your success or failure on the future of western civilization.


The key for Perry in the debates from now on rests in his ability to re-frame questions in a way that fits his governing style. He’s not running for Micro-Manager-in-Chief or Historian of the Free World, so he shouldn’t allow himself to be jawboned into trying to compete on those terms. America doesn’t look to technocrats or theorists to get us out of trouble. We look to leaders who call upon technocrats and theorists for input when needed and otherwise act decisively on available information to solve intractable problems.


The “Doer, Not a Talker” ad Rick Perry is currently running on Fox News makes that point well. If he can project that sense through the rest of the debates and not allow himself to be dragged into trying to come across as a master of fine detail or grand, sweeping theories, he’ll avoid being tripped up on the third item in a list of three as he was last Wednesday.


The best approach for Perry can be summed up in a phrase often used in baseball when a hitter is mired in a slump brought on by over-thinking at the plate: See the ball, hit the ball.


This essay was first posted on November 14, 2011 by Walt
in the blog The Damn Dirty Rhino