The Field Guide to Ted Cruz

[SrWoodchuck]

Texas Monthly:

One evening in 2009, I spent a few hours at a reception in Dallas, surrounded by assorted young professionals, chatting with a lawyer who had some kind of job in the private sector and the earnest interest in public policy that I tend to associate with political ambition. As a journalist, based in Texas, focused on politics and the economy, such small-talk situations are an occupational hazard. But this schmoozing session stood out. The lawyer and I quickly fell into a lively exchange about the ongoing contrast between the Texas Miracle and the Great Recession, with reference to Dallas Fed data and the political philosopher John Rawls. I was impressed enough to make note of his name: Ted Cruz.

I figured, back in 2009, that he was going to run for something at some point, and that someday I might end up writing about this bright and ambitious lawyer. I failed to foresee that within a few short years, Cruz would be a sitting senator with a realistic chance of being the leader of the free world or that our increasingly nervous nation would be worrying about who Cruz is, and whether he can be trusted with the power of the presidency. I did not anticipate the possibility that helping Americans make sense of the guy would become someone’s job, much less mine.

As it happens, though, I’ve been covering Cruz’s political career since it began, especially during several months of intensive reporting in 2013 for the profile that appeared on our February 2014 cover. By March of last year, when Cruz announced his presidential campaign, the subject was familiar terrain—as were the various questions and concerns that people had asked me in person and on social media about his beliefs, goals, and character during his brief but eventful time in American politics.

Those questions and concerns have only intensified since then, and will soon become unavoidable. Cruz, who was at first widely dismissed as a minor contender in a crowded Republican field, too unpopular and extreme to be the party’s nominee, has steadily worked his way to the front of the pack. A few days from now, he is likely to win the Iowa caucus. I can’t read Cruz’s mind, or tell you how to feel. But for readers trying to make sense of the senator, I can offer some reasonably sound rules of thumb.

1) Ted Cruz is not a fire-breathing extremist.

Cruz, obviously, is a polarizing figure, for several reasons. One is that he is perceived as a hard-line conservative, if not a genuine extremist. This is a misconception that he has encouraged, by casting himself as someone outside the party establishment, to the right of his colleagues. He campaigned in 2012 as a Tea Party insurgent and has staged numerous fights in Congress, in opposition to the so-called conciliators of the surrender caucus. He is now stumping around Iowa, denouncing the “Washington cartel.”