Texas native Bryan Curtis compares cowboys:
The difference between Perry and Bush, in Texas terms, is Old West versus New West. Bush was New West. His Texanness was pure theater. Think of him calling for Osama Bin Laden "dead or alive," or his Crawford ranch, where the brush-clearing never stopped. These are New West affects, slipped on as easily as a Fort Worthian slips on a pair boots from Leddy's. If Bush was tapping a vein of Texas mythology, it was that of the big-city wheeler-dealer—T. Boone Pickens, Jerry Jones—even if Bush never wheeled and dealed at their level. Rick Perry is Old West. He dreams a 19th-century dream.
Perry's great-great-grandfather, D.H. Hamilton, was an ex-Confederate who resettled in Texas, like John Wayne's Ethan Edwards in The Searchers. Perry's great-grandfather lived near Paint Creek, a fly-speck West Texas town, as did his grandfather, and his father, Ray. Paint Creek is Perry's Olduvai Gorge, the cradle of his Texanness. "A very broad area but with very few people," as he later put it. The Perrys had no plumbing until Rick was 6, and took baths in a washtub on the back porch. Perry's mother, Amelia, made his underwear even when he left for college. As Patricia Kilday Hart noted in a Texas Monthly profile, the Perrys "lived a life few Texans can imagine today."
(Photo by Flickr user nixter. As Curtis notes in his piece, "[Perry] owns a pair of boots called "Freedom" and "Liberty."")
The Dish 