Rick Perry Looks Like Many People, Apparently

The newest Republican presidential candidate looks familiar to everyone

Rick Perry does not look like Rick Perry. Or, at least, he doesn't look like a stranger. Perhaps one reason both voters and reporters have found him so charming at the Iowa State Fair this week is that the Texas governor looks like someone else. Someone familiar. But who, exactly? That's subject of much debate, on Twitter. We submit this guide to what Rick Perry's face looks like, aside from his own face.

Our fellow Watergate resident J.J. Gould, deputy editor of TheAtlantic.com, tweeted his Perry-face-related epiphany Tuesday morning: "Just figured out what's been getting me about #RickPerry: He looks like an *exact genetic splice* of George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan." He's not far off:

Mally Ulm, meanwhile, thinks Perry has a more glamorous twin: "Rick Perry looks slightly like Willem Dafoe... No really he does, take a second glance. Just slightly."

(Photos via Associated Press and Reuters.)

Rich Lowry gets all culture war about it, writing for the National Review:

In a photo of him at Texas A&M, wearing white sneakers and his Yell Leader sweater, he looks like the guy we're always supposed to root against in movies about college life. Perry apparently lacks all ironic detachment, the quality that so endears liberals to Pres. Barack Obama even though they constantly exhort him to become a fighter.

(Photos via Reuters and YouTube.)

Perry in 2000 compared to James Daughton as Gregory Marmalard in Animal House. Seems less likely. Still, the culture war angle might help explain why Hadiyah Robinson says Perry looks more like "George W. Bush's more aggressive cousin."

(Photos via Reuters.)

 

Bill Oakley, writer and producer for The Simpsons and Portlandia, says "Rick Perry looks like a fake President from a direct-to-DVD sci-fi movie where his name would be President Thorndyke." We do not know which cult classic Oakley has in mind, so we're doing with Bill Pullman's president from Independence Day.

(Photos via Reuters and YouTube.)

Phillip Hester agrees: "All policy aside, Rick Perry looks like the evil President in every movie or comic book ever."

(Photos via Reuters and YouTube.)

Dan Scanlon says he's more like "Dennis Quaid playing Ronald Reagan in a Lifetime original movie." Above, Quaid stars as a Bush-like president in American Dreamz.

Perry should probably aim for Pullman meets Reagan.

Update: There's more.

Ben Schwartz says Perry "looks like the kind of guy Billy Jack would beat up." He does share the style of this Billy Jack villain:

 

(Photos via Reuters and YouTube.)

 

But more important, here's the obvious lookalike, as noted by commenter Brian Walsh: Josh Brolin in Oliver Stone's W.

 

(Photos via Reuters and YouTube.)