Paul Burka of Texas Monthly is not an admirer of conservatives in general nor of Gov. Rick Perry in particular. Here’s how he sums up the gubernatorial primary:

Anyone who doesn’t recognize Perry’s political talent by this time has to be deaf, dumb, and blind. He has assembled an electoral juggernaut that is brutally efficient. The Perry team knew in 2008 the strategy they were going to use against Hutchison in 2010. I was working on a story about the race for the February 09 issue, and they told me what it was — that Hutchison was a spender, an appropriator, and they were going to shove Washington and all its sins into her lap. They didn’t care whether Hutchison knew it. That’s how confident they were about this race. Perry lives, eats, and breathes politics 24/7. That’s his strength, and also his weakness. But he is far better at it than anybody Texas has produced–better than Bush, better than Richards. The only Texan I can think of who had a similar focus on nothing but politics was Lyndon Johnson. Or, I should say, LBJ as portrayed by Robert Caro. … The only unanswered question about the race is whether Hutchison ever had a chance.

I don’t think that’s true of Perry — he’s no LBJ-level cynic. He’s a true believer on a lot of issues, including some quirky ones that don’t earn him a lot of political advantage. Burka, like a lot of Texas liberals, is half condescending, half in awe of Perry. Here’s the advice he gives to Perry’s Democratic opponent, Bill White:

Your natural impulse will be to react to Perry as Ann Richards did to Bush, only moreso: underestimate him, underrate him, regard him as dumb, treat him as a lightweight. If you do this, and I’m not sure you can help yourself — Richards couldn’t, Hutchison couldn’t — you will lose by fifteen points and be like all the other corpses in the political graveyard who can’t believe they lost to … Rick Perry? Perry is many things you and I don’t admire, but he is not a lightweight. … Laugh about his hair and he’ll destroy you the way he did Hutchison.

Burka, of course, wants to dismiss Perry as a mere political talent: a super-effective hack. That’s a bedtime story that liberals like to tell themselves: “We’re smarter than those other guys, we’re better, more decent . . . we’re just not cynical enough, not mean enough, not sufficiently callous political operators.” Burka advises White: “You’re smarter than [Perry] is. In every other aspect of politics, he is better than you are.” But if ruthlessness were all it took, Ann Richards wouldn’t have topped out as governor of Texas; she’d have ended up Queen of the Known Universe.

The chattering about Perry as a possible presidential contender already has started. One thing Perry has to be considering: Being governor of Texas is one of the best jobs in politics, like being mayor of New York City or the U.S. ambassador to the Court of St. James’s. The presidency, on the other hand, does this to you: