reporter: few cabinet officials have been able to fly under the president s and the media s radar for the past two and a half years, with one significant exception. rick perry. this is the coolest job i ve ever had. the former texas governor and presidential candidate was plucked from retirement to lead the department of energy, a department he d campaigned on getting rid of and famously forgot at a department. the third one i can t, sorry. oops. reporter: when chosen for the job, the new york times reported that perry didn t realize that the departent maintained thousands of nuclear warheads. yet observers say with an affable personality and political skills honed as a governor, perry has managed to navigate the choppy political water of washington with relatively few ripples. rick understands that in our business, particularly when you re working for someone else, you keep your head and your rear end down.
nationally? joining me is the publisher of the new hampshire union leader and the writer of that editorial, joe mcquaid. the panel is also here. so, joe, chris christie. first of all, tell us how you started you cut the field to get to the point where you decided to pick chris christie? he was among a group of how many you were seriously considering for the endorsement. i think we were really looking just at the governors. i think after the experience of the past eight years, freshman senators without a lot of experience are not good. so you punished cruz and rubio for having the same resume as barack obama? yes, punishment is kind of a harsh word from the union leader. fair enough. disparage, things of that nature. so it was the governors and walker didn t last long enough to really be under consideration. i m not sure why governor perry didn t get any traction but it was left with kasich, bush, and christie and from that, myself and my editorial writer, some people th
nationally? joining me is the publisher of the new hampshire union leader and the writer of that editorial, joe mcquaid. the panel is also here. so, joe, chris christie. first of all, tell us how you started you cut the field to get to the point where you decided to pick chris christie? he was among a group of how many you were seriously considering for the endorsement. i think we were really looking just at the governors. i think after the experience of the past eight years, freshman senators without a lot of experience are not good. so you punished cruz and rubio for having the same resume as barack obama? yes, punishment is kind of a harsh word from the union leader. fair enough. disparage, things of that nature. so it was the governors and walker didn t last long enough to really be under consideration. i m not sure why governor perry didn t get any traction but it was left with kasich, bush, and christie and from that, myself and my editorial writer, some people th
decided to pick chris christie? he was among a group of how many you were seriously considering for the endorsement. i think we were really looking just at the governors. i think after the experience of the past eight years, freshmen senators without a lot of experience are not good. so you punished cruz and rubio for having the same resume as barack obama? yes, punishment is kind of a harsh word from the union leader. fair enough. disparage, things of that nature. so it was the governors and walker didn t last long enough to really be under consideration. i m not sure why governor perry didn t get any traction but it was left with kasich, bush, and christie and from that, myself and my editorial writer, some people that i respect in the community, we looked and christie is the guy who can take the fight to trump, hillary, isis. it s interesting. you said you seem to say, we were talking earlier, christie s
well, absolutely. i mean think about how much we ve seen the polls fluctuate so far this cycle. it is a little bit surprising that perry didn t make the cut and kasich swept in there. big win for chris christie if you think about it because he was really far down in the polls. but as you know he s been kind of plowing in in new hampshire trying to make connections with voters there by just being there all the time. so i do think that this is very much in flux and i also think that the lower-tier candidates, though, probably will get a few eyeballs in their earlier debate. and certainly this is a chance for all of them to try to shine and jump up to the next level for coming debates. people may be calling it the jv version of the debate, but i think there could be real benefits in being part of that earlier crew. that is going to be really fun. the early one is going to be fun. right. i want to talk about that in a second. but i just heard as we ve been recently talking about th