Rick Perry: Ten Virtues

Make no mistake: some things about Rick Perry burn my beans. I’ve written about that before. ( http://justsayinghere.blogspot.com/2011/08/when-christians-are-assholes.html )

But I also know that people are complex. I look away from the world as it really is if I choose to see a man as a cartoonish villain or a shallow monster, when he’s really a person with good qualities and bad. And to know the truth is to possess something of high value.

So I take a new look at Rick Perry. Here are 10 virtues that I see in him without having to look too hard.

1. Perry knows that his position of allowing in-state college tuition to undocumented non-citizens will dismay his Republican base. I think his position is a good one and a compassionate one and a wise one; and I admire that he defends it without waffling.

2. Perry knows that his position that social security is a Ponzi scheme will frighten the voting elderly. I think that his position is misguided, but I admire that he doesn’t back down despite the detriments of that position to his campaign.

3. Jumping into a national campaign is intellectually hard. The range of national issues is wide and new to a man who before was focused on state issues. Therefore, to enter the race took courage, knowing that immediately he would have to answer questions on those issues in nationally-televised debates.

4. Jumping into a national campaign, and being a front runner, is hard. You’re the person that rivals and others are eager to tear down and humiliate. That’s another reason that Perry’s leap into the presidential race shows courage.

5. Perry has ramrod-straight posture.

6. Perry is poised in debates.

7. Perry has run into trouble with his Republican base for ordering HPV vaccinations for pre-teen Texas schoolgirls. Michele Bachmann has blistered him on this issue. But his explanation is a compassionate one: he said that he knew a woman who was dying of cancer from the HPV virus; she convinced him to fight that fight, so others might not suffer as she did. (There is debate about when he met this woman; it might have been after he signed the executive order for vaccinations. But his invocation of this woman humanizes him and honors her.)

8. Rick Perry served his country honorably in the Air Force.

9. Rick Perry rose from growing up a tiny town to be the multi-term governor of a great state.

10. Rick Perry knows how to appeal to people on a gut level.

I do this exercise about Rick Perry because he’s now the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination. At another time, I might do the same thing for another Republican candidate.

Does this mean that I want Perry to be president? I hate the idea. But this isn’t the time for me to count the ways. This is an exercise generosity toward a foe.

In being generous to Rick Perry, I believe that I’m being generous to my own soul.