Rick Perry's Dartmouth Post-Debate Remarks

The American public has been restricted to seeing the Republican candidates only in a media-controlled debate format.  Red State has done us a favour, then, by providing scenes of Rick Perry in his natural element.  There has been a severe disconnect between the media portrayal, particularly in the debates (and yes, he freely admits that he doesn't prefer debates), and his natural ability with people.

Part One shows him delivering remarks to the assembled crowd, and Part Two has him answering questions.  You can see why he is so enormously popular in Texas.

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Update: Kyle-Anne Shriver at Pajamas Media also sees through the media filter to find that "Perry's pluses are still undeniable".

Even if I take two points off Perry’s score for that Texas swagger and another five points for the debates and another ten for the sum of things he’s done against the perfectly conservative creed, that man still comes off looking like a president.

I’m forced to add in a bonus score for Perry due to the fact that by now Americans in the other 49 states are downright desperate for some Texas-brand prosperity.

And no matter how one chooses to slice, dice, or puree Perry’s record, one does not become the longest-serving governor of the second largest and most populous state in the union by happenstance.  Perry isn’t the only Texan responsible for the Texas economic “miracle,” but to deny him a large chunk of the credit for such exemplary success in such extraordinarily bad times seems quite stupid.

She goes into some detail, including other sources, about the success of Perry and Texas, and concludes:

All in all, perhaps Perry’s candidacy cannot recover from what everybody who is anybody has deemed his horrible “debate” performances.  But if that’s the case, then America may be a lost cause.  If civics has so completely succumbed to sound-bite gotcha fests that the only thing that matters in elections is how one does in American Idol politicking, then there’s no point in establishing a real record of governance or in business or anything else for that matter.

It seems to me that this over-reliance on podium-speak and media-blitz and branding claptrap is what got us our President Obama.  [Or, for that matter, Mitt Romney]