Monday, November 28, 2011 3:03:04 PM
For Perry, Life Was Broadened and Narrowed by the Military
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: November 25, 2011
COLLEGE STATION, Tex. — Rick Perry arrived on the campus of Texas A&M University in the tumultuous fall of 1968, cut his hair short, regulation military style, and donned a uniform. College students across America were rising up against the Vietnam War, but Mr. Perry, a member of the Corps of Cadets here, would not be among them.
“There will be no Columbia, no Berkeley here,” the university president, Earl Rudder, declared that fall. When a small band of antiwar protesters took to the steps of the Memorial Student Center, a building dedicated to “Aggies who gave their lives for our country,” young Mr. Perry was incensed.
“I don’t want to use the word ‘long-haired hippie types,’ ” said John Sharp, a Perry classmate and chancellor of the Texas A&M University system, “but a person who did not look like they fit into A&M said some kind of Jane Fonda-type stuff, and I remember Perry got up in his face pretty quick over that. He took exception to it, shouted the guy down.”
Today Mr. Perry, the Texas governor, is running for president in a crowded Republican field as one of just two candidates with military experience. (The other is Ron Paul.) As an Air Force pilot, he flew C-130 cargo planes out of Dyess Air Force Base outside Abilene, about an hour south of the tiny town of Paint Creek, where he grew up.
On the campaign trail, Mr. Perry has focused on domestic affairs, pitching himself as the man who can “overhaul Washington.” His Air Force days give a hint of how he might handle another aspect of the presidency, national security. In recent debates, he has emerged as a muscular interventionist, a stance that can be traced, in part, to his military service.
It was an experience that both expanded and narrowed him, taking him to exotic locales while cementing his Texas roots and the traditional, conservative values that have been so central to his political identity. On Air Force missions overseas, he told students at Liberty University this fall, he had his first encounters with “oppressed people” — an experience that sharpened his idea of the United States as a beacon of democracy and helped convince him that Americans “cannot isolate ourselves within our borders.”
Today, the college student who backed the Vietnam War is, at 61, the hawkish presidential candidate. Mr. Perry has called President Obama “irresponsible” for ending the Iraq war, urged the overthrow of the Iranian government — he would not rule out a military strike — and suggested he would deploy troops to Mexico to “kill these drug cartels” there.
He has also pledged to reinstate “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the military policy that barred openly gay soldiers.
Vietnam hung as a shadow over Mr. Perry’s service. As a young cadet, he mourned A&M graduates killed in battle. But with the war winding down, Mr. Perry did not see combat. Instead, he carried people and supplies (“trash hauling,” he and his buddies called it) around the United States, Europe, Asia and Africa.
“I saw the beaches of Rio de Janeiro, the old cities of Europe that existed long before Columbus ever set sail for the Americas, and the sands of the Persian Gulf, occupied by Bedouins who seemed stuck in a previous century,” Mr. Perry wrote in “On My Honor,” his book about the values of the Boy Scouts.
Yet Mr. Perry’s world travels did not stir any longing for a life on the road. Rather, he felt “a growing sensation of homesickness,” he wrote. When stationed in Abilene, he lived in a little house he had fixed up out in the country. His fellow pilots remember him more for the cookouts and hunting trips he organized than for any zest to see the world.
“He barely left home, and while he moved around the world it was in the military bubble,” said Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas who has followed Mr. Perry’s career. “My sense of it is that it insulated him, as opposed to broadening his perspective...”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/26/us/politics/for-rick-perry-air-force-service-broadened-and-narrowed-life.html?ref=texas
By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG
Published: November 25, 2011
COLLEGE STATION, Tex. — Rick Perry arrived on the campus of Texas A&M University in the tumultuous fall of 1968, cut his hair short, regulation military style, and donned a uniform. College students across America were rising up against the Vietnam War, but Mr. Perry, a member of the Corps of Cadets here, would not be among them.
“There will be no Columbia, no Berkeley here,” the university president, Earl Rudder, declared that fall. When a small band of antiwar protesters took to the steps of the Memorial Student Center, a building dedicated to “Aggies who gave their lives for our country,” young Mr. Perry was incensed.
“I don’t want to use the word ‘long-haired hippie types,’ ” said John Sharp, a Perry classmate and chancellor of the Texas A&M University system, “but a person who did not look like they fit into A&M said some kind of Jane Fonda-type stuff, and I remember Perry got up in his face pretty quick over that. He took exception to it, shouted the guy down.”
Today Mr. Perry, the Texas governor, is running for president in a crowded Republican field as one of just two candidates with military experience. (The other is Ron Paul.) As an Air Force pilot, he flew C-130 cargo planes out of Dyess Air Force Base outside Abilene, about an hour south of the tiny town of Paint Creek, where he grew up.
On the campaign trail, Mr. Perry has focused on domestic affairs, pitching himself as the man who can “overhaul Washington.” His Air Force days give a hint of how he might handle another aspect of the presidency, national security. In recent debates, he has emerged as a muscular interventionist, a stance that can be traced, in part, to his military service.
It was an experience that both expanded and narrowed him, taking him to exotic locales while cementing his Texas roots and the traditional, conservative values that have been so central to his political identity. On Air Force missions overseas, he told students at Liberty University this fall, he had his first encounters with “oppressed people” — an experience that sharpened his idea of the United States as a beacon of democracy and helped convince him that Americans “cannot isolate ourselves within our borders.”
Today, the college student who backed the Vietnam War is, at 61, the hawkish presidential candidate. Mr. Perry has called President Obama “irresponsible” for ending the Iraq war, urged the overthrow of the Iranian government — he would not rule out a military strike — and suggested he would deploy troops to Mexico to “kill these drug cartels” there.
He has also pledged to reinstate “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the military policy that barred openly gay soldiers.
Vietnam hung as a shadow over Mr. Perry’s service. As a young cadet, he mourned A&M graduates killed in battle. But with the war winding down, Mr. Perry did not see combat. Instead, he carried people and supplies (“trash hauling,” he and his buddies called it) around the United States, Europe, Asia and Africa.
“I saw the beaches of Rio de Janeiro, the old cities of Europe that existed long before Columbus ever set sail for the Americas, and the sands of the Persian Gulf, occupied by Bedouins who seemed stuck in a previous century,” Mr. Perry wrote in “On My Honor,” his book about the values of the Boy Scouts.
Yet Mr. Perry’s world travels did not stir any longing for a life on the road. Rather, he felt “a growing sensation of homesickness,” he wrote. When stationed in Abilene, he lived in a little house he had fixed up out in the country. His fellow pilots remember him more for the cookouts and hunting trips he organized than for any zest to see the world.
“He barely left home, and while he moved around the world it was in the military bubble,” said Cal Jillson, a political scientist at Southern Methodist University in Dallas who has followed Mr. Perry’s career. “My sense of it is that it insulated him, as opposed to broadening his perspective...”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/26/us/politics/for-rick-perry-air-force-service-broadened-and-narrowed-life.html?ref=texas
Join the InvestorsHub Community
Register for free to join our community of investors and share your ideas. You will also get access to streaming quotes, interactive charts, trades, portfolio, live options flow and more tools.
