The Arena Yes And Yes

Texas Monthly wonders whether “The Texas Miracle” is real and, if so, whether Gov. Rick Perry should get credit for it. The answers to both questions are clear as day – yes and yes. For a lengthy, wonky, and rather comprehensive treatment of The Texas Miracle, interested parties may want to read Chuck DeVore’s The Texas Model. DeVore pretty definitively answers the first question. As for the second, it doesn’t take much imagination to realize that the longest serving governor of Texas, whose unprecedented term has coincided with a Texas jobs boom at a time when the rest of the nation faltered, deserves some of the credit. While no single individual merits full credit for Texas’ bucking the outgoing economic tide of the past half decade, a respectable portion ought to be reserved for “the governor [who] has been bird-dogging jobs for the past thirteen years.”