Texas Governor Rick Perry plunged headlong into the 2012 White House race on Saturday, pledging to get Americans working again and slamming Barack Obama as a failed President who has heaped “economic disaster” on America. In his announcement — first online and then minutes later in a speech before hundreds of supporters and conservative conference attendees in South Carolina — Mr. Perry said he would issue a “pink slip” to the present occupiers of the White House, who have "prolonged our national misery, not alleviated it.”
“We cannot afford four more years of this rudderless leadership,” Mr. Perry said, citing Mr. Obama's inability to bring bitterly divided U.S. lawmakers together over a debt-ceiling deal in time to avoid the country's first-ever credit rating downgrade.
“We cannot and must not endure four more years of rising unemployment, rising taxes, rising debt, rising energy dependence on nations that intend us harm,” Mr. Perry said.
