I remember following the Texas gubernatorial race last year between Governor Rick Perry and former mayor of Houston Bill White. Mayor White repeatedly challenged Perry to a televised debate, an invitation that Perry never accepted.

Back then I simply assumed that Perry thought there was no way he could lose the election and he’d have nothing to gain by actually indulging White in a dialogue (which ultimately proved to be true. Perry won handily with 55 percent of the vote). However, after watching Perry’s performance in the recent GOP primary debate, I think I understand exactly why he never wanted to debate.

I’m not a big supporter of Rick Perry (that’s an understatement), but when he announced his bid for the White House over the summer I at least gave him some credit assuming he might finally be the powerhouse that Republicans were looking for. Boy, was I wrong. He surged past the other contenders in the polls upon entering the race and his numbers plummeted almost just as quickly.

The main reason why I was upset about Perry jumping into this race is that unlike Mitt Romney, he’s still a sitting governor.

That means that he still has a group of constituents he’s been elected to represent and he still has a series of responsibilities in terms of policy-making that he needs to be keeping track of.

In short, as he is our governor, I think his first concern ought to be governance, and that’s a little bit difficult to do when you’re making a bumbling fool of yourself every week on television.

Perhaps our governor has forgotten about the $27 billion budget shortfall that our state is facing at the moment. Perhaps he’s also relatively unfazed by the United States District Court ruling that says that Texas’s newest redistricting plan doesn’t satisfy the requirements of the Voting Rights Act. And perhaps in his fervor for repealing “Obamacare” he’s forgotten that Texas has one of the lowest rankings in the union in terms of health system performance.

I guess I wouldn’t mind Perry being in campaign mode right now and ignoring the needs of the citizens he was elected to serve if he was actually doing a decent job in his bid for the presidency, but it’s apparent that ship is sinking pretty quickly. I can reconcile with my needs not mattering to the state’s chief executive, but I think us Texas citizens deserve a bit better than this.

If you’re going to stand up on national television and boldly proclaim which agencies of the executive branch you want to eliminate, I should hope you could at least remember which agencies you actually had in mind.

In a desperate attempt to add some positive spin to his recent gaffe, Perry’s campaign staff has created a new poll on his website asking voters, “What part of the federal government would you like to forget about the most?” The list includes such agencies as the Department of Labor, the National Endowment of the Arts and the IRS among others.

The Department of Defense is conspicuously absent; I guess Perry doesn’t have a problem with all government bureaucracy but rather can pretty easily pick and choose which organizations he doesn’t like.

As Perry fumbled to come up with the right words on Wednesday night, the only coherent thought he really seemed to express was his regret about his nonchalant uttering of the word “Oops.” Funny — I can think of no better word to describe the management of Perry’s campaign up to this point.

I sincerely feel bad for anyone working for Perry’s PR team, as it’s apparent they must have their work cut out for them up to this point. And when I think of how Texas has elected Governor Perry three times since 2002, my immediate reaction is something along the same lines: “Oops.”

Brandon Bub is a sophomore majoring in English and edits The Daily Campus opinion column. He can be reached for comment at [email protected].