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Rick Perry.

Article Excerpt
When I interviewed you during your reelection campaign last fall, we talked about the likelihood that you wouldn't get a majority of the votes cast, and you said, "Whatever percentage I get on Election Day, on the day after Election Day I'm going to be 100 percent governor." Yet since your inauguration in January, we've seen the blowup over the human papillomavirus vaccine in which the people attacking were primarily Republicans; the scrutiny over your fast-tracking of TXU's proposed coal plants, and again, Republicans are as agitated as Democrats; and now the Texas Youth Commission scandal, which is still unfolding but some folks want to associate it with you as well. Is this the start you intended to get off to? Are you the 100 percent governor you said you'd be?

Every issue that they're talking about, we instigated.

"They" meaning the Legislature.

Or the media, the citizenry. We instigated, with HPV, a national debate, and I think appropriately. As a matter of fact, the more I know about this disease, the more I know that we are absolutely, unequivocally correct. I don't think anyone had any idea that it was as widespread or as costly. I tell my Republican friends, "If you want to focus on the good old fiscal side of it, we spend $350 million per biennium on this disease with cancer treatments and hysterectomies and the cost to the state."

But the objection wasn't so much the money as the state's imposing its will.

We impose every day. We impose on how fast you got here. We impose on how we build roads. We impose on what courses a child takes at school. What I'm substantially more concerned with is that ten years from now, I'm going to run into a 25-year-old woman at the grocery store who's dying of cervical cancer and have to explain to her why I had the ability and the authority to mandate that vaccine, to make that vaccine available, but didn't have the courage to do it.

What do you tell your Republican friends who have a moral issue with HPV--the ones who say, "The governor is encouraging and enabling young girls to have sex"?

It's my responsibility to teach my daughter the morals of her life, and I think it's that way with everyone. If we had developed a vaccine to prevent lung cancer, I don't think a lot of people would say, "Oh, hell, let's start smoking." I don't think this is going to promote a sexually active lifestyle--this is about a disease. I respect their position. I just happen to think it's wrong.

A number of Republicans in the Legislature have been critical of the way you and your staff handled the rollout of the issue. Anything you'd like to go back and redo?

I'll leave everybody to their own Monday morning quarterbacking. I have to lead the state.

You...