The Hill News

Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) talked to former President George W. Bush last month about possibly running for president.

Perry, who's set to make his intentions about entering the race clear this weekend in South Carolina, said his predecessor as Texas governor prodded him toward running.

“'You’ll do what’s right,'" Perry said Bush had told him when Perry called the former president on his birthday. "He said you don’t want to wake up when you’re 70 and go, 'I wish I had tried that. I wish I had done that.'"

Perry took over as governor when Bush was elected president, and could retread Bush's footsteps if he decides to formally enter the race, a likely prospect.

In an interview with TIME magazine, Perry talked up his chances as a presidential candidate, arguing that he doesn't think t! here's "any doubt" he would be the most conservative candidate in the race.

Perry said he saw jobs as the No. 1 issue and that his record as governor would carry well nationwide, where Perry says he thinks he could compete.

"Now I’m enough of a realist to know that California is a pretty high hurdle for a Republican," he said. "But I’m going to go out there and I’m going to have a story that’ll [make] a lot of peopleâ€"Independents and maybe even some Democratsâ€"look at me and go, 'That’s the type of individual that we can get behind. You know to make America proud of itself again.'"