Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry Taking His Turn In 'Dancing With The Stars'

AUSTIN, TX -- "There are no second acts in American lives," F. Scott Fitzgerald once famously said. Don't tell that to former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who's slated to join the Season 23 cast of "Dancing with the Stars."

ABC, the network that airs the program, revealed this season's contestants on Tuesday. Perry will be joined by fellow Texan Vanilla Ice, disgraced Olympian Ryan Lochte, triumphant Olympic gymnast Laurie Hernandez, retired football player Calvin Johnson and Indy race car driver James Hinchcliffe.

Let's hope Perry is more graceful on the dancing stage than he is at oratory. In a failed 2012 bid for the presidency, Perry became a national laughingstock when he forgot one of the three federal agencies he passionately vowed to abolish should he become president.

Given several opportunities to name all three agencies while the audience laughed, Perry -- the longest-running governor of Texas before stepping down last year after being elected in 2000 -- offered a sheepish "Oops" after failing to recall the third agency he'd shut down.

He's never been able to live that down.

More recently, Perry came to the defense of GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump for verbally tangling with Khizr Khan, the Muslim-American man whose son, Army Capt. Humayun Khan died at the age of 27 while in defense of the U.S. during his deployment in Baghdad. The elder Khan gained national exposure after taking Trump to task for the real estate mogul's pledge to ban Muslims from entering the country should he become president, the still-grieving father making his remarks at the recent Democratic National Convention.

"In a campaign, if you’re going to go out and think that you can take a shot at somebody and not have incoming coming back at you, shame on you," Perry said in the CNN interview, directing his comments to Khan. He told his interviewer that Khan "struck the first blow" in criticizing Trump and was thus fair game.

In his defense of Trump, Perry didn't explain if he agreed with Trump's criticism of Khan's wife, who silently stood by her husband without addressing the crowd herself. "If you look at his wife, she was standing there. She had nothing to say," Trump told ABC News. "She probably, maybe, she wasn't allowed to have anything to say," he said, suggesting a patriarchy inherent to the Muslim faith that he perceived bans women from speaking publicly. "You tell me.”

Perry's defense of Trump advances his surrogacy role for the GOP nominee. At Trump's appearance in Austin, where he staged a rally, Perry joined his preferred presidential candidate on stage during a speech at the ACL Live theater. Patch happened to come across Perry at Lavaca and 4th Street as he headed back to his chauffeur-driven car after the event.

His exquisite, yet inadvertent, timing in posting for the spontaneous photo while fist-bumping fans could presage impeccable timing while dancing. Note the bus in the background, with the face plastered on its side seemingly looking over Perry with a measure of skepticism.

Perry won't be the first Texas politician taking his "star" turn on the dancing floor. In 2009, former U.S. House Majority Leader Tom Delay pranced around, but rather ineffectively. Delay was never able to garner high scores from the dancing judges, and he eventually bowed out after developing stress fractures in his feet.

Perry said he'd dedicate his DWTS performance to veterans. But he hinted that professional dancer Emma Slater, with whom he's been paired, will have a real challenge on her hands -- she's "...got her work cut out for her," he wrote) in teaching him the dance steps.

Not a professional dancer, the closest Perry's gotten to choreography is the "Texas Two-Step," but figuratively so, in oratory. While we wish him the best, we have a feeling his performance might re-brand the show to "Dancing with the Stares" given the incongruous sight of his dancing.

But we could be wrong.

For those who may have missed in, here's the "oops" heard 'round the world from 2012:

Here's a list of the show's professional dancers and the stars they'll be paired with. In Perry's case, it's sure to be a hootenanny:

Maksim Chmerkovskiy and Amber Rose
Val Chmerkovskiy and Laurie Hernandez
Artem Chigvintsev and Maureen McCormick
Sasha Farber and Terra Jole
Derek Hough and Marilu Henner
Witney Carson and Vanilla Ice
Lindsay Arnold and Calvin Johnson
Jenna Johnson and Jake T. Austin
Allison Holker and Babyface
Sharna Burgess and James Hinchcliffe
Emma Slater and Rick Perry
Cheryl Burke and Ryan Lochte
Gleb Savchenko and Jana Kramer

>>> Photo of Perry at Lavaca and 4th Street in Austin by Tony Cantu; portrait credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr