Double Down: Game Change 2012

by John Heilemann

  Perry’s wife, Anita, agreed that her husband had the White House goods, and that mattered more than anyone knew. Protective of their two adult children and her family’s privacy, Anita generally kept her distance from Rick’s political doings. But at the RGA meeting in November 2010 where anti-Romney sentiments boiled over and Barbour told his fellow governors he was considering a bid, Anita urged her husband to go for it, saying, You’re the one who should think about running. A nurse, Anita objected to Obamacare and believed that the president had to be defeated. She also knew that her husband thought Romney was a hollow conniver, and a yellow-bellied punk.

  Perry’s distaste for the front-runner stemmed from an altercation between them in 2006. As RGA head, Romney had employed a consultant, Alex Castellanos, who was working at the same time for an independent candidate challenging Perry. The incumbent considered this an outrageous conflict—a sort of RGA subsidy to his opponent. In a heated meeting at the governor’s mansion in Austin, with Carney looking on, Perry demanded that Romney stop paying Castellanos or send Perry additional funding to even the score. Romney’s reaction struck Perry as disingenuous, defensive, thin-skinned, and limp; after one sharp exchange, Romney stood up as if to storm out, then shrunk back in his seat and sulked.

  When the meeting was over, Perry snorted to Carney, “How’s he going to deal with Putin if he can’t deal with this?” (Romney thought Perry was acting like a bully, and started referring to Carney as “Jabba the Hutt.”)

  On July 1, Perry underwent his scheduled back surgery. Two weeks later, Carney, Johnson, and Perry’s statehouse chief of staff, Ray Sullivan, came to the governor’s residence to meet with the Perrys and “scare them straight,” as one adviser put it, about the realities of what a run would mean. Given the extreme lateness of Perry’s start, his schedule would be punishing. Assuming a mid-August launch, he would face three crucial debates in September while at the same time having to rake in a whopping pile of cash to demonstrate his fund-raising strength by the end of the third quarter.

  The Perrys had been subjected to invasive scrutiny in the past, including over a raft of rumors in 2004 that Rick was gay. Anita had hated that episode, and it left her husband disgusted and prone to passive-aggressive tangles with the press. A presidential campaign would be exponentially worse, his advisers warned the couple. Carney cited the stories about the Daniels marriage, which Perry’s people (like everyone else) assumed had been driven by the Romney campaign. They’re ruthless, Carney said, and the national press would be jackals. “There will be people following you, people following your family,” Johnson added. “Your lives will change forever.”

  Nothing Perry’s advisers were saying struck him as new information. I’ve been in this business long enough to understand the seedy underbelly of politics, he thought. Sure, they play rough and hit hard in the NFL. But Texas football ain’t exactly powder-puff.

  The Perrys told Carney and Johnson that they understood the dangers. The couple was ready to make their decision.

  “Don’t say yes now,” Carney cautioned. “You need to think about this.”

  The next day, Perry phoned his lead strategist and said firmly that he was in. The degree of his confidence was stratospheric—and rooted in delusion about how prepared he and his team actually were.

  Less than a month before Perry’s presidential announcement, his entire operation consisted of fewer than a dozen people. They had held precisely one full-blown planning meeting. They had not done a speck of polling or other survey research. There had been no thorough examination of Perry’s record in Texas or analysis of how it might play nationally. Nor did his team have an accurate understanding of the surgery Perry had just undergone. His spokesman had described it publicly as a “minor medical procedure,” and that was what the governor told his advisers, too. In fact, Perry’s doctors had performed a partial spinal fusion and nerve decompression, as well as injections of his own stem cells, an experimental therapy not approved by the FDA. In the fortnight after going under the knife, as he prepared to embark on the most demanding physical and mental excursion of his life, Perry was ingesting painkillers and having trouble sustaining his attention during meetings with potential bundlers and policy experts. Ever taciturn, ever macho, he told his people he was fine—and not one of them pressed him for more information or seemed to give it a second thought.

  For a little while, none of this looked like political malpractice. Perry burst into the race as if he had been shot out of a cannon. On August 6, he hosted a prayer rally in Houston called “The Response”; some thirty thousand Christians filled Reliant Stadium to hear him sermonize. A week later, he drew comparisons to Reagan for the announcement stem-winder he delivered in Charleston. And then it was on to New Hampshire, Iowa, and the decimation of Bachmann.

  The morning after Waterloo, August 15, Perry showed up at the Iowa State Fair, in Des Moines. In an open-necked blue shirt and khaki pants held up by a silver-tipped belt, he looked right at home amid the livestock pens, deep-fried butter treats, and pork chops on sticks—and sounded delighted to unsheathe his populist hatchet and hack his main competitor to pieces.

  Earlier that day, across the country in New Hampshire, Romney had taken a thinly veiled jab at Perry, suggesting he didn’t comprehend “the real economy” because he wasn’t a businessman. Perry fired back: “I was in the private sector for thirteen years after I left the Air Force. You know, I wasn’t on Wall Street, I wasn’t working at Bain Capital, but the principles of the free market, they work whether you’re in a farm field in Iowa or whether you’re on Wall Street.”

  Later, a reporter pressed the point: Romney says his background makes him more qualified to create jobs. What about that?

  Perry smiled wryly, blew a kiss to the camera, and said, “Give him my love. Give him my love.”

  • • •

  FOURTEEN HUNDRED MILES AWAY on Commercial Street, Perry’s facetiously tender display of amour elicited a torrent of f-bombs from Rhoades and a forced laugh from Romney. For nearly a year, the default front-runner had been waiting for the other shoe to drop—and now a giant ostrich-skinned cowboy boot had come crashing down on his head.

  Everything about Perry made Romney anxious. The frenzied Bible-thumping of The Response struck him as a bizarre way to kick off a campaign, but thirty thousand people? Hoo, boy. Romney’s calls to his bundlers to scope out Perry’s fund-raising potential did nothing to reassure him, and neither did Zwick’s assessment: We’re going to lose market share with donors. Then there was Perry’s instant rise to the top of the polls. Forty-eight hours after his announcement, Rasmussen Reports had Perry at 29, eleven points ahead of Mitt. For the first time this cycle, Romney gazed at a rival and thought, This guy could be the nominee.

  On August 17, Romney sent an e-mail to his inner circle with the subject line “the road ahead,” the rally-the-troops intent of which was undercut by its tone of rattled apprehension:

  Hi team,

  It didn’t take a PhD to figure that Rick would get a rocket boost in the polls when he finally got in. The media has been begging for his entry for months, with folks like Rush and Fox among the most passionate suitors. What’s it mean for us? . . .

  Of course, we will not shrink from a fight, as conflict is sure to be brought our way. And in the meantime, we will ready our forces—financial, intellectual, strategic, political. The intensity of the coming campaign will sharpen us for the contest with President Obama.

  We should not burden the days ahead with heavy seriousness and worry. We are in the middle of one of the most animated features of a democratic republic—a campaign for the presidency. It should be fun, and at the least, it should be instructive. We will grow from the experience, and if we take care to hue [sic] to our values and vision, it will enrich the nation as well, win or not win. But winning would be better . . .

  Lately, in my stump speeches, I’ve been quoting a New Hampshire 19th century poet. His poem was written to capture the spir
it needed to overcome the challenges that faced the pioneers of America’s West. In some ways, it may apply to us. “Bring me men to match my mountains, / Bring me men to match my plains. / Men with empires in their purpose, / And new eras in their brains.”

  Mountains ahead,

  Best, Mitt

  • • •

  ROMNEY WASN’T THE ONLY one spooked by Perry’s ascent. The entire GOP establishment was in a tizzy, and nowhere was the alarm greater than in Bushworld, which had helped spawn the creature it now considered a sort of Frankenstein.

  Perry had begun his political career as a Democrat, but in 1989 Rove persuaded him to switch parties and then ran his campaign for Texas agriculture commissioner. Eight years later, when Perry sought the lieutenant governorship, the Bush machine was behind him. Since Rove was working full-time for W. on his gubernatorial reelection and nascent presidential effort, he installed Carney as Perry’s lead strategist. But the consultants wound up clashing bitterly over tactics, with Rove at one point threatening to withhold use of an ad in which Bush 41 endorsed Perry. Carney capitulated and Perry eked out a win, but the too-close-for-comfort margin left a nasty aftertaste on both sides.

  Feuding consultants are as commonplace in politics as camera hoggery, but in the years that followed, Perry personally escalated the noisomeness as he sought to distance himself from a patrician dynasty with which he felt scant kinship. In 2002 he opposed the appointment of Robert Gates, Bush père’s CIA director, as president of Texas A&M, annoying 41 and Barbara, and then publicly attacked their son. Campaigning for Giuliani in 2007, Perry volunteered that 43 “was never a fiscal conservative” in Texas—“I mean, ’95, ’97, ’99, George Bush was spending money.” Lashing back, Bush the Elder and his wife endorsed Hutchison in her primary challenge to Perry, as did several of their son’s lieutenants, including Rove, who had come to view his former protégé as an ungrateful clown.

  As Perry stepped into the presidential race, Rove was ready to pounce at the first opportunity. In short order, out in Iowa, Perry provided two: an intemperate eruption regarding Fed chairman Ben Bernanke (“If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I dunno what y’all would do to him in Iowa, but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas”) and an unsubtle poke at Dubya’s privileged breeding (“I went to Texas A&M; he went to Yale”). The next day on Fox, Rove unloaded, calling Perry’s Bernanke comments “over-the-top” and “not presidential” and adding that “this pattern of sounding like he’s being dismissive of the former president is not smart politics.”

  Jeb Bush sought to squelch the story that his clan was at war with his brother’s successor. “I’ve never heard anybody in my family say anything but good things about Rick Perry,” he told Fox News, which suggested Jeb was either deaf or not listening carefully. Up in Kennebunkport, his mother was hyperventilating over Perry. His brother was steaming, too. At a dinner party in Washington, the forty-third president vented to a Romney ally. “You can’t take Perry seriously,” Bush said. “He’s a chickenshit guy.”

  The Romneyites, like their boss, were taking Perry very seriously. Heading into Labor Day, he had established himself as the front-runner, seizing the lead in nine consecutive national polls, by as much as nineteen points. Scouring his Texas record, Romney’s researchers noted that Perry supported letting the children of undocumented immigrants pay in-state tuition rates at public colleges—a lethal position in GOP primaries around the country. But when Newhouse tested the issue in Iowa focus groups, the reaction was disturbing: Republican voters were so enamored of Perry that they refused to believe he could hold such a liberal position.

  Amid the chorus of concern in Boston, Stevens was a lone dissenter. Though he’d been worried about Pawlenty, Perry looked like a paper tiger to him. He’s a guy running against government who has been a government employee for most of his life, Stevens thought. Perry grabbing credit for prosperity in his home state? What a joke. Texas was a business paradise long before Perry took office, and the unemployment rate was lower on the day he was sworn in than it was now. On social issues, Perry would be nailed from the right by Bachmann; on foreign policy, he was clueless.

  And that was before Stevens had a chance to read Fed Up! Once he did, he changed his view of Perry from paper tiger to clay pigeon. The book’s assertion that Social Security was unconstitutional, the equivalent of a pyramid scheme, caught Stevens’s attention first. And the more he studied the text, the more wacky stuff he found. At headquarters, on plane rides, on the bus, with his colleagues and with Romney, Stevens obsessively whipped out his Kindle and read passages aloud. The guy wants to legalize marijuana! he bayed. He thinks Obamacare is somehow connected to the Dred Scott decision!

  Soon everyone in the Commercial Street headquarters was poring over the book. On the cover of his copy, Rhoades placed a yellow Post-it on which he’d scribbled an apostrophe so that the title read F’d Up!

  Romney found his staff’s preoccupation with Effed Up, as they referred to it in conversation, sort of funny. But he assumed that they were gilding the lily in describing some of Perry’s positions. “You’re just paraphrasing,” Romney would say. “Come on.” He was especially disbelieving that Perry’s views on Social Security were as out-there as Stevens claimed—until his strategist sat him down and made him watch a Perry TV appearance that proved the point.

  But none of it really served to soothe Romney’s fears. When he heard about Perry’s Bernanke comments, he said, “I bet the base will love that.”

  On September 6, in an effort to parry Perry on jobs, Romney unveiled in Nevada a tract of his own that was considerably more sober than Fed Up!: a 161-page “business plan for the American economy” containing fifty-nine discrete policy proposals. From there he flew on to California, where he would go toe-to-toe with Perry for the first time, at a debate at the Reagan Presidential Library, in Simi Valley, not far from where Ann Romney engaged in one of her hobbies—dressage horseback riding.

  The morning of the debate, the Romneys, Stevens, and a handful of other aides gathered for a final round of prep at a guesthouse on the stable grounds where Ann kept her horses. Rhoades and other staffers in Boston were piped in via speakerphone. Stevens was happy to be past what he dubbed the “snakes on a plane” free-for-all dynamic of the early debates, and confident to the point of cockiness about Mitt’s ability to win a “strength versus strength” showdown with Perry.

  Romney remained unpacified, his innate political pessimism running rampant. He’s hitting me hard, he’s scoring points, Mitt said. We keep talking about the problems, about his weaknesses, but we never get specific about how I’m supposed to respond. I want model answers. We don’t have them. And the debate’s a few hours away.

  Stevens could see that Perry was in Romney’s head, and tried to calm him down.

  Don’t let him psych you out, Stevens said. You’re so much better than he is. You’re gonna kill him.

  Don’t tell me that, Romney snapped. He’s a natural. He was great at the Iowa State Fair.

  Give me a break, Stevens said, his voice rising. He’s an agriculture commissioner who went to an ag fair! He’s an accidental governor! Just go out there and be the hunter!

  You keep telling me this race is all about jobs and the economy, Romney retorted. He’s got a great jobs record in Texas. He’s got a great narrative. Don’t underestimate him!

  He’s the guy George Bush thinks is an idiot! Stevens said, now shouting.

  Romney pushed back from the table and walked out of the room. Stuart was making him crazy; Romney needed to cool off. Rhoades dispatched an e-mail to Stevens: Did Mitt just leave? Did you really just yell at him? Is that what’s happening there? What the fuck is going on?

  Mitt’s just worried about Perry, Ann said, breaking an awkward silence in the room.

  He’s gonna kill him, Stevens repeated. It won’t be close.

  By the time the debate started, Romney had regained his composure. He slapped at Perry for
being a career politician. Citing Fed Up!, he smacked him on Social Security. And, most aggressively, he sought to undermine him on jobs. “Texas has zero income tax,” Romney said. “Texas has a right-to-work state, a Republican legislature, a Republican supreme court. Texas has a lot of oil and gas in the ground. Those are wonderful things, but Governor Perry doesn’t believe that he created those things. If he tried to say that, well, it would be like Al Gore saying he invented the Internet.”

  Perry wasted no time in hitting back: “Michael Dukakis created jobs three times faster than you did, Mitt.” But Romney was ready for him: “Well, as a matter of fact, George Bush and his predecessor created jobs at a faster rate than you did, Governor.”

  Romney wasn’t alone in bashing away at Perry; by the middle of the debate, the newcomer had been socked so often by his rivals that he was moved to exclaim, “I kinda feel like the piñata here.” When one of the moderators asked about a fresh criticism from Rove, who had said that day on Good Morning America that Perry’s likening of Social Security to a Ponzi scheme was “toxic,” Perry strayed far from any imaginable script and took a pop at his tormentor. “Karl has been over-the-top for a long time in some of his remarks,” Perry groused. “I’m not responsible for Karl anymore.”

  The media verdict on the debate was that Perry had started out strong but sagged visibly partway through. Romney thought Perry had done okay, but just okay; the Texan could be had.

  “See?” Stevens said. “The guy’s not in your league.”

  But for Romney’s strategist, the memory that stuck from the evening wasn’t what took place on television. It was something Stevens said he’d witnessed on-site before the debate: Perry, clearly in pain, requiring help from two members of his security detail to get up a short flight of steps.