… let’s slow down here.
I’ll be honest - a little bit of bile rose up in the back of my throat when I went to the Statesman website this morning and saw this headline: Perry might want eight more years:

Four more years just might not be enough for Gov. Rick Perry.
Trying to bat down speculation he might be vice presidential material in 2008, Perry has been telling editorial writers and reporters not to assume too much.
Perry says he might seek a third four-year term as governor in 2010. That would mean Perry, who followed George W. Bush into the governorship when Bush was elected president in 2000, is at least contemplating being governor for 14 years.
That collective clang you hear is a generation of statewide wannabes, particularly Republican gubernatorial hopefuls, dropping their spoons into their Cheerios.

No, I’m pretty sure that noise came from the electorate, not potential gubernatorial candidates. And it wasn’t so much a clang as it was a “I think I shit myself.”
Why does Perry feel the need to “bat down speculation he might be vice presidential material in 2008?” Doesn’t polling in the low 30s - in Texas, as a Republican - pretty much do that for him? Or, what about him just being Rick Perry - doesn’t that bat down speculation, too?
Geh. I feel like I should go brush my teeth or something.