With this post, I continue a short series consisting of my analyses of the Republican candidates for the nomination for President.  To recap, I’m limiting my discussions to three candidates: Mitt Romney, Herman Cain, and Rick Perry.  The structure of this series consists of a collection of posts concerning what I don’t like about the candidates and then a series of what I do like about them.  I’ll conclude with my endorsement of a single candidate.  At this point I’m in the series of what I like, and here I’ll talk about what I like about Governor Rick Perry.

Economy:  Some insist that the Texas job growth during the current Panic has little to do with Perry’s stewardship: he’s merely ridden the benefit of Texas’ wealth of oil and gas.  Perry, they say, has simply had Texas on autopilot these last 11 years (including the current Unpleasantness).  They’re right as far as it goes.  But Texas also has a burgeoning information technology and communications sector due to its well-educated and skilled work force.  However, that redounds to Perry.  Unlike other governments, including our own Federal government, Perry has kept his Texas government out of the way of the State’s economy, allowing Texas citizens and businesses do what they do far better than governments can: create wealth for themselves and their State.

Indeed, some 37%-40% of the jobs created since the official end of the recession (an aside: does anyone other than an economist poring over his numbers really feel like he’s out of the downturn and prospering again?) have been created in Texas.  That works out to around 260,000 jobs actually created since June 2009, and that’s also in a State economy that’s been growing about three times faster than the nation’s economy (admittedly, this is no large rate, given the anemic performance of the current administration’s national economy).

Perry also has cut spending, including excess spending in education.  Critics have decried this, but they’re simply committing the Progressive error of conflating efficient spending with lots of spending for its own sake.  The cuts Perry has made to education spending (for instance) have been to the fat, and he’s required remaining spending to be done efficiently.  See above about the educated work force in Texas.

Business: Perry is plainly pro-business, which makes him pro worker, since thriving businesses are a thriving labor market.  He was able to push through, in 2003, an amendment to the Texas Constitution that caps medical malpractice awards.  This has led since then to a 30% reduction in medical malpractice insurance premiums.  Far from reducing the quality of medical care in Texas, that’s improved it: doctors are flocking to Texas, and medical service availability has never been higher.

He also pushed through serious tort reform.  As of this year, plaintiffs who lose their cases must pay court and attorney costs for the defendant.

Management Style:  He knows how to collect a competent staff and then let them do the job for which he hired them.  He is involved in decision-making, but he doesn’t micro-manage, delegating effectively instead.

Other: Perry successfully pushed through the 2011 Texas legislature a requirement for voters to present a photo ID in order to vote.  As of this year, one of the following five easily obtained photo IDs must be presented:  a driver’s license, a military ID, a passport, a concealed handgun license (did I mention that this is Texas?), or a special voter ID card which the State provides for free.

Finally, Perry well understands the 10^th Amendment and its role in the federal nature of our governmental structure.  He pushes actively for a return to the sovereignty of the States within the framework of our federalism.

In the current contest between two views of the role of government in American citizens’ lives, it seems useful to talk about two views of Happiness and which of these seems more appropriate and will do us individually more good—and so achieve more for our country.  One of the two fundamental versions of happiness [sic] is the Progressive one: personal pleasure, or what makes a man the happiest and most (immediately) comfortable.

This is a view born in the ’70s’ hippy hedonism of “if it feels good, do it;” although it has evolved and its descriptions have grown more circumspect in the intervening 40 years.  It has become more a question of “what can government do for me?”  Proponents of this view insist that government will take care of them, so they don’t have to worry about the stress of the workaday world—they can simply follow their bliss without responsibility for the outcomes.

This is the view that it’s patriotic to pay (ever) more taxes, not so government can have the funds to do the things we originally created it to do, but so that government can have the funds to take care of us as we grow increasingly dependent on it.  This expanding wealth transfer generally is couched in the heart-wrench of assumed human need: we must keep social security going in perpetuity so that we might be taken care of by government (i.e., strangers) in our dotage; people are out of work, so government must pay us for being out of work (apparently in perpetuity—unemployment insurance is payable now for 99 weeks, up from an original 18 weeks or less, and our current President wants to extend that yet further); people belong to self-appointed special groups, and government must give them special treatment, also in perpetuity: “affirmative” action programs, for instance, are never-ending and ever-expanding, and atheists are increasingly looking for offense in religious ceremonies that they choose not simply to ignore.

While we could get away with this in the short term in an earlier time, we’ve seen dependency on government accelerate, and we’ve seen the transfer of our personal responsibility to government via that dependency blow up our economy in the present time.  In the current Panic, TARP, the 2009 Stimulus Bill, and Dodd-Frank all were, and are, intended to inure us from our failure by giving all of us recourse to others’ tax money.  Failed businesses were not to be allowed to fail; they were absolved of responsibility for their failure and propped up, for all the firm finger-shaking done in their direction by government officials.

This isn’t personal responsibility.  This is government assuming responsibility, taking it from us.  And at great peril, for as Nebraska Congressman Howard Buffett (the father of today’s Warren) said 55 years ago:

Will this legislation fulfill its promises? If you think so, consider this rarely mentioned fine print clause. If the government is to guarantee you what the consequences of your actions will be in this case, security, then the government must take control of your activities. For with responsibility—even self-arrogated responsibility—must go authority.

This means that if politicians are to supply your security, they must control your work, your spending, and your saving.

On the other hand, a modern Conservative’s view of Happiness is that of John Adams:

All men are born free and independent, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights, among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; that of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; in fine, that of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness.

One of the early appearances of this is in Adam’s “A Declaration of the Rights of the Inhabitants of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts;” it’s also included in Massachusetts’ 1780 Constitution as Article I of Part the First.

This is Bill Gates and the late Steve Jobs making themselves stinking rich (and more power to them and others like them)—and employing others in the bargain—on the strength of their own hard work and skills.  This is Joe the Plumber and others like them earning a living—and employing others in the bargain—on the strength of their own hard work and entrepreneurial ambition.  This is the mom and pop business that lets parents put their children through college on the strength of the hard work and personal initiative of those moms and pops.  This is the worker employed by Gates and Jobs and Joe and mom and pop who, lacking the talent, perhaps, or the interest, to work for himself, nevertheless has the ethic to earn a living in a job that helps him to see to his future and that of his children, rather than looking to Big Government to take care of him.

My parents came out of the Depression more determined than ever to rely on themselves for their welfare and not on their government.  Near the home in northern California where my parents lived for part of their retirement, stands a large house—a mansion—that has the busiest, most detailed, gingerbread-laden Victorian architecture and decoration, and the ugliest, I’ve ever seen.  All that complexity and detail work, though, was not because the man who built it, a local lumber magnate around the time of the Depression, liked that sort of thing.  On the contrary, his lumber business was declining, and the loss of business was threatening his labor force.  But he didn’t want to lose them.  Optimistic capitalist that he was, he knew the economy would recover, and he wanted to be part of that recovery.  For this, he needed a skilled labor force readily available; he didn’t want to lose time to having to find, and likely to train, employees after having laid off the ones he had, with their subsequent scattering to the winds looking for new jobs.  Also, these were his labor force, and he felt a measure of responsibility for them.  So he built his monstrosity of a house, and he used his lumber enterprise workers to do the construction.  He kept them employed through the worst of the downturn, they kept jobs through the downturn, and they were available when his lumber business began to recover.

This was done, not by government, but by an individual.  Where true responsibility lies.

This is Happiness.