Rick Perry: Soon, Gov Of TX Will Be More Powerful Than POTUS (VIDEO)

Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX)
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Who wants to be President of the United States when you can be Governor of Texas? According to Rick Perry, trading the latter job for the former would be crazy — and that’s why he swears he’s not running for president.

Perry, fresh off the national book tour where he called for states to secede from Social Security, stopped by Fox News Sunday yesterday for a quick victory lap after his fellow Republican governors chose him to head the Republican Governors Association last week.

Now that he’s in charge of helping more Republican governors get elected, it perhaps makes sense that he’d be so darn into the job. But Perry also sought to tamp down rumors that a presidential run is in his future by making it clear he has the job he wants — and also suggesting that the job everyone thinks he wants won’t amount to much pretty soon.

Perry has cast himself as the Pied Piper for decentralized federal power lately. Along with Social Security, Perry thinks states should be able to secede from the Department of Education, the EPA, the new health care law (natch) and other federal programs he thinks represent a vast Constitutional overreach by Washington politicians of both parties.

With that in mind, don’t be too surprised by his adamant denial of rumors that he might follow in the footsteps of the man he replaced in Austin, George W. Bush, and run for president in 2012. It’s not that Perry doesn’t have ambition, he told Fox’s Chris Wallace yesterday — it’s that he thinks the Governor of Texas will soon be more powerful than the President.

“I think being the governor of a state like Texas…is a more pivotal job in the future,” Perry said when Wallace asked him about running for President. “I do indeed hope that there’s someone in the future that says, ‘I’m going to go to Washington, try to get back to our Constitutional roots and devolve this centralization of government back to the states.’ So why would you want to be up there if the action is down here in the states?”

Watch (prez stuff starts around 11:28):

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