Senators like to talk, but "governors have to make choices every day," former Texas Gov. Rick Perry said, likely setting the stage for one of the arguments he'll make if he throws his name into the presidential primaries next year.
"Governors are judged on the results of what we do," Perry told
The Daily Caller on Friday "Senators talk."
Further, the former Republican said, senators "don't get to learn, or to exhibit their leadership ability and have clear results of their actions."
It would be like hiring an airplane pilot, he continued: "would you rather have someone who talks about aviation a lot and really gives a great speech about aerodynamics and about navigation and about weather and about all of the different things a pilot needs to know, but have only about 100 hours of being behind the yoke of an airliner, or would you rather have a 10,000 hour individual who has had to fly through storms?"
Perry later told an audience of more than 500 people at the Pennsylvania GOP Lincoln Dinner in Harrisburg Friday that Americans, by choosing President Barack Obama, "took our chance with this extraordinarily bright, capable, wonderful speaker who had no experience of running anything, and he proved it. Time after time after time."
But despite his experience as governor, Perry admitted to The Daily Caller that he was "a bit arrogant" in 2012, thinking that because he had been the governor of Texas for 12 years, that qualified him to talk about the issues candidates face.
And even though Perry has not officially announced his campaign for the GOP nomination, he has been pressing hard on his record as governor. At last weekend's
Iowa Freedom Summit, he pointed out his record of success in Texas, including signing seven balanced budgets and leading the state with the highest job growth and one of the lowest tax burdens in the country.
But Perry joins an ever-expanding slate of GOP candidates for 2016, reports
The Hill.
There are plenty of senators, including as Texas' Ted Cruz, Florida's Marco Rubio, and Kentucky's Rand Paul eying bids, and governors or ex-governors including Chris Christie of New Jersey; Scott Walker of Wisconsin; Jeb Bush of Florida; Mike Huckabee, Arkansas; John Kasich, Ohio; Mike Pence, Indiana; and Bobby Jindal, of Louisiana.
Perry has cut down senators before now, The Hill reports, including his own state's Cruz, who he challenged people at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast earlier this year to "ask me in eight years if Sen. Cruz has made an impact on the state...at this particular point in time, it’s a little early to say that a junior senator would have substantively changed the state.”