Rick Perry, in happier days. (Associated Press) 
 
 Rick Perry is not running for a fourth term as governor of Texas. 
 
 He announced this news Monday, showed a video of his accomplishments as governor, quoted Ecclesiastes, and sampled all the trademark Rick Perry behaviors we have come to know and love (well, short of forcing everyone to pray for rain, then dragging them into a special session to pass anti-abortion legislation the people of Texas did not want). 
 
 The looming end of his term (just 18 months away) frees his schedule up considerably. It gives him time to do such exciting things as learn the names of all the departments of government that he disapproves of, drive a car threateningly past Ben Bernanke’s house late at night, and serenade strangers in the restroom with “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad,” as, apparently, is his wont. 
 
 And, of course, think about a presidential run in 2016. 
 
 So-called insiders are already pointing out why it would be a bad idea for him to run. They say reasonable-sounding things, like, “Are you kidding me? Rick Perry?” 
 
 Sure, he fizzled in 2012, a year when a piece of damp cardboard led the field for a full 6 weeks after someone pointed out it was not Mitt Romney. So how could he expect to prevail against people such as Chris Christie and Marco Rubio, who not only are actual live humans but also possess the significant advantages of not being Newt Gingrich, Herman Cain or The Individual Under Donald Trump’s Hair? He couldn’t beat Rick Santorum, and you couldn’t even Google Rick Santorum! 
 
 But these so-called insiders are full of sour grapes. Two years is plenty of time to figure out things like: “When is election day?” “What is foreign policy?” “Should you put aviation assets in the ground?” and “How do you make an attack on an opponent during a debate that sounds marginally more threatening than being savaged by a drunk teddy bear?” (“Is it the Mitt Romney that was on the side of — against the Second Amendment before he was for the Second Amendment? Was it — was before — he was before the social programs from the standpoint of — he was for standing up for Roe v. Wade before he was against first — Roe v. Wade?”) 
 
 But forget the naysayers. 
 
 He still might not be able to alter the past, or the name of his ranch, and he may not be able to evolve any of his positions, since he doesn’t believe in evolution (“It’s a theory that’s out there,” he said in 2011), but — well, my first reason for a second Perry campaign is also the simplest: How much worse could it possibly be? 
 
 He’s already shouted “Live free or die! Victory or death! Bring it!” in a slurred, bizarre fashion at a New Hampshire dinner. He’s already said “Oops!” in a major national debate. He’s done everything short of pulling an Anthony Weiner on Twitter, and — if New York polls are any indication — that’s not something the voters of America are bothered by. 
 
 This brings me to my second reason: second chances. We are, apparently, very much fans of second chances these days. Eliot Spitzer is running for comptroller in New York City. Anthony Weiner is running for mayor — and leading, even though we have all seen his lurking trouser weasel. Mark Sanford is once more a member of Congress. Comebacks are everywhere, like kudzu or 2016 speculation. 
 
 Sure, when people talk about second chances, they usually mean comebacks after some sort of sexual misconduct. Have an affair? Get back in that political saddle and ride away! We don’t care what you do in the bedroom, unless the bedroom is where you take in-kind bribes from sinister corporations. Sometimes not even then. Of course there are second acts in American lives. F. Scott Fitzgerald had too much to drink and didn’t know what he was talking about. If Rick Perry trains hard, running up flights of stairs while reciting the names of government departments, familiarizing himself with human words and behaviors, maybe he can do for people who have said idiotic things on the national stage what Mark Sanford has done for people who are, well, Mark Sanford. This is America, where you can put anything in your mouth except your foot. And maybe even that. 
 
 I can’t remember the third reason. ||||| An excellent example of the parchment-dry, utterly poker-faced genre of comedy that my friend Steven R. Weisman, a former Times man of note, calls New York Times humor: 
 
 That “cavernous heavy equipment dealership” bit is a marvellous visual touch, don’t you think? 
 
 And so, we bid farewell to Rick Perry, the perfectly coiffed, ruggedly handsome, pistol-packin’, varmint-shootin’, three-term governor of the great state of Texas? 
 
 Uh, no. We’ll probably be seeing him more of him than ever. It’s pretty clear that, far from retiring from public life, he’s just clearing the decks for another attempted conquest of the Presidency. 
 
 He’d probably have no trouble winning another term in Austin, but why bother? He has nothing to prove in that department. He’s been governor of Texas longer than anybody since Sam Houston, including Sam Houston. 
 
 Being governor of Texas is a notoriously undemanding job. Even George W. Bush made a reasonably O.K. go of it. Nevertheless, getting out from under its burdens, light though they may be, will free up a lot of Perry’s time for him to study up on things like how many Justices there are on the Supreme Court, what century the American Revolution took place in (hint: not the sixteenth), and, of course, which Cabinet departments he wants to abolish. 
 
 Perry put forth a good many bad ideas during his disastrously meteorite-like Presidential run last year, and there is no reason to expect he will put forth better ones next time. His parting gift to Texas, which turns out to be the opening shot in his 2016 White House bid, was calling a special legislative session, now underway, to pass the punitive, probably unconstitutional, and (in most of the country) electorally suicidal abortion law that was temporarily stymied by State Senator Wendy Davis’s eleventh-hour filibuster last month. 
 
 But, lest we forget, Perry did put forth one transcendently good idea last time: a constitutional amendment getting rid of lifetime Supreme Court appointments. Under Perry’s proposal, on which I ladled praise at the time, Justices would serve eighteen-year terms, staggered so that a new Justice would be appointed every two years. 
 
 The salutary effects of this reform would be legion. For a full (but entertaining!) explanation of why this is a truly great idea, you know where to go. 
 
 It is important to give credit where credit is due, even when the credit belongs to Governor Rick Perry. 
 
 Photograph by Eric Gay/AP. ||||| Conservatives longing for a 2012 savior are increasingly fixating on Texas’ governor. Peter Boyer talks to Perry about his suitors, his state’s economic success—and his timetable for deciding. 
 
 One of the photographs that Texas Gov. Rick Perry keeps on his BlackBerry is a portrait of Aurora P. (“Rory”) Perry, the family’s black Labrador Retriever, who last year acquired a key role in local Perry legend. The governor and the dog were out for an early morning jog when a coyote suddenly appeared, growling at Rory. Perry, who carries a Ruger .380 handgun in his belt when he jogs, pulled the weapon and shot the coyote dead. When some Austin locals protested that Perry’s reaction was excessive, and dangerous, he shrugged it off. “Don’t attack my dog,” he said, “or you might get shot.” 
 
 It is the sort of dustup that, say, Mitt Romney would never be involved in—although Romney might well prefer a coyote controversy to another conversation about Romneycare. A lot of conservatives would apparently prefer it, too. Neither Romney, the presumed frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, nor the other contenders, has excited enthusiasm in the Republican base, which seems to want a candidate with less baggage than Newt Gingrich, less squish than Romney, and more magnetism than Tim Pawlenty. The right’s hot new prospect of the moment is the arch-conservative governor of Texas, the man with the square jaw, thick mane, and snakeskin cowboy boots. 
 
 Perry has long flatly declared himself out of the presidential race. Last year, he told Newsweek’s Andrew Romano, and the Texas Tribune’s Evan Smith that he had no interest in a White House run—an assertion that he repeated in a Fox News interview with Greta Van Susteren this week. Yet, rumors to the contrary—plainly fed by a measure of wishful thinking on the right—persist. And, meeting with Newsweek in his office in the Capitol, Perry said that the question of a presidential run might be revisited next week—when the legislative session ends. 
 
 This year’s legislature, under Perry’s cajoling, delivered on some of the right’s most cherished ambitions—a law requiring doctors to run a fetal sonogram before performing an abortion, a measure requiring voters to present a photo I.D. at the polling booth, and a version of loser-pays tort reform. But the action that really has conservatives looking to Texas with longing was a budget deal that covered a revenue shortfall through spending cuts, without raising taxes or touching the state’s $9.4 billion rainy day fund. 
 
 Rick Perry. Credit: Eric Gay / AP Photo 
 
 The Dallas Morning News editorialized against the “mean Texas budget,” noting that the spending cuts came at the expense of education, veterans, and care for the state’s neediest. Perry is unmoved. “Same thing was told in 2003,” he says, referring to the last time the state, at his urging, had to cover a shortfall by cutting spending. “It’s working pretty well in Texas. Texas has made the hard decisions. Twice while I’ve been the governor, we’ve had budget shortfalls, once in ‘03 and this time. We’ve made the decision: reduce your spending, don’t raise taxes. And the recovery that occurs after that is pretty substantial.” 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Also in This Issue: 
 
 • Sharon Begley: Weather Panic is the New Normal 
 
 • Janine di Giovanni: The Making of a Monster 
 
 • Niall Ferguson: Why Austerity WorksIndeed, the Lone Star State’s economic success over the last decade has been notable. Since 2001 (roughly the tenure of Perry, the longest-serving Texas governor) the state has gained more than 730,000 jobs. In contrast, California, Texas’s antithesis in political culture, and a favorite Perry rhetorical foil, lost more than 600,000 jobs in the same period (and is on course to lose more jobs this year than last). 
 
 That gap is why some of Perry’s most ardent support emanates from California. Dan Logue, a Republican in Sacramento’s state Assembly, says he began worrying when the chief executive officer of Carl’s Jr., an iconic California burger chain, told him that he was opening 300 restaurants in Texas this year, none in California, and was considering moving his headquarters to the Lone Star State. Logue asked him why. “He said, 'It takes them two years to get permits in California,' ” Logue recalls. “'It takes 45 days in the state of Texas.'” 
 
 In April, Logue led a delegation of California political leaders, including Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, the Democratic former mayor of San Francisco, to Texas on a learning tour. They met with Perry, and with ex-pat California businessmen, and heard the obvious—Texas is a right-to-work state with no income tax, a light regulatory regime, relatively low corporate tax rates, and a steady supply of cheap labor. Newsom, whose political identity is liberal, was struck by the state’s insistently business-friendly attitude. He says now, “You can’t be for jobs, and anti-business”—which happens to be a stock phrase of Rick Perry’s. ||||| Photograph by Eric Gay/AP Photo 
 
 Texas Gov. Rick Perry today owned up to an “oops” moment that wasn’t even his. 
 
 His wife, Anita, misspoke when she told a journalist that abortion is a woman’s right, Perry, 63, a Republican who opposes terminating pregnancies, told a crowd in Smithville, New Jersey. 
 
 “From time to time we’ll stick the wrong word in the wrong place, and you pounce upon it,” Perry told reporters at a campaign event for U.S. Senate candidate Steve Lonegan, a 57-year-old Republican from Bogota. Lonegan faces Democrat Cory Booker, mayor of Newark, New Jersey, in the Oct. 16 special election to fill the seat left vacant after the June death of Sen. Frank Lautenberg. 
 
 Anita Perry made her remark Sept. 28 during an interview at the Texas Tribune Festival at the University of Texas in Austin, according to the newspaper. 
 
 “That could be a woman’s right, just like it’s a man’s right if he wants to have some kind of procedure,” Perry was quoted as telling editor-in-chief Evan Smith. 
 
 Texas is the largest and most populous among the 13 states that ban abortion beyond 20 weeks’ gestation. In June, state Sen. Wendy Davis, a Democrat from Fort Worth, filibustered for 11 hours to prevent a vote on that ban. It passed during a special session convened by Perry, who signed the bill July 18. 
 
 Perry failed in his bid for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, and his decision not to seek another governor’s term has led to speculation that he’ll run again in 2016. He told reporters today that he is traveling around the country “talking about blue-state versus red-state policies and which one of those work best for the people of their states and for the people of this country.” 
 
 During a televised debate Nov. 9, 2011, in Rochester, Michigan, Perry said he would eliminate the U.S. Departments of Education and Commerce, and couldn’t remember his third target. 
 
 “I can’t,” he said then. “Sorry. Oops.” 
 
 Later he looked at his notes and said, “By the way, it was the Department of Energy I was talking about.”
– Rick Perry is done in Texas, which will give him time to do all kinds of exciting things, like "learn the names of all the departments of government that he disapproves of," and, of course, run for president, writes Alexandra Petri at the Washington Post. And Petri thinks he should go for it. "Sure, he fizzled in 2012, a year when a piece of damp cardboard led the field for a full six weeks after someone pointed out it was not Mitt Romney," but hey, there are three good reasons: It's not like it could get any worse than last time. Americans believe in second chances. "I can't remember the third reason." In what can't be a good sign for Perry, Rand Paul used the same joke last night, Politico notes. Alex Pareene at Salon doesn't like his chances, either. "'Vote for your dumb right-wing dad' won't work any better in 2016 than it did in 2012," he reasons. And while Hendrik Hertzberg at the New Yorker is also pretty sure he's toast—and deservedly so—he does point out that Perry had one "transcendentally good idea" during his "disastrously meteorite-like" presidential run, namely a constitutional amendment getting rid of lifetime Supreme Court appointments in favor of 18-year terms.