The Texas governor makes his Iowa debut.

The speech was bumpy at times. He pledged that when he became president members of the military would once again have someone they respected in the Oval Office. That's a pretty serious charge to make both about the commander in chief and the military, which drills its members to respect the president no matter what. Also, he may want to lose that line about how the wrinkles in his shirt were not his wife's fault—at least by the time he gets to the general election and starts going after those suburban swing-voting women.

Bachmann spent less than one-quarter of the time that Perry did with voters, though of course she had just spent weeks campaigning with a personal touch in the runup to the straw poll. She stressed her local roots, having been born in Waterloo: "I'm not a politician, I'm a real person … raised by real people." It was a glancing shot at both Perry and Romney, whose looks and manners appear to come from central casting. It will be a neat piece of jujitsu if a member of Congress can play the outsider against a governor and former governor. Usually, it's the other way around.

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