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Perry’s Public Service Behold, a hard-money Texas politician.

All the world’s right-thinkers are denouncing Rick Perry for suggesting this week that Texans would get “pretty ugly” with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke if he guns the money supply any more between now and the 2012 election. His poor choice of words aside, the Texas Governor is right to put monetary policy front and center in the 2012 Presidential debate.

Let’s stipulate that Mr. Perry, in his first week on the Presidential stump, was wrong to use the words “almost treacherous, treasonous” in referring to Mr. Bernanke. Both of those words ought to be reserved for specific acts of betrayal against America, and the Fed chief is certainly a patriot. In particular, “treason” is the only crime specifically defined in the Constitution, which is something a tea party politician ought to learn.

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On the other hand, everybody knows Mr. Perry meant no literal harm and was indulging the irrational exuberance that is one of his trademarks. The faux-outrage from liberals who routinely refer to the tea party as “terrorists” shouldn’t be taken seriously.

The real news isn’t the rhetorical gaffe but the substance and politics of Mr. Perry’s demarche. Here we have a Presidential candidate, a Texas populist no less, laying out a position in favor of sound money. This is a bear walking on its hind legs. The ghosts of Wright Patman and Henry B. Gonzalez are howling in the Hill Country.

The media trope of the week is that Mr. Perry is George W. Bush only more so, but he clearly isn’t the same on monetary policy. Mr. Bush, who first appointed Mr. Bernanke, was an easy-money, weak-dollar President. He and his former economic advisers still don’t understand how Alan Greenspan’s policies at the Fed contributed to the credit and housing manias that led to the financial meltdown that caused the GOP’s political undoing in 2008.

Mr. Perry seems to appreciate that the Federal Reserve can’t conjure prosperity from the monetary printing presses. His articulation needs some work, but we hope the Texan doesn’t let media and other criticism deter him from pursuing the argument. The issue is crucial to understanding—and explaining to the American public—how the meltdown happened and why Americans are so unhappy with the current recovery.

The Texas Governor has a better insight into middle-class economic anxiety than do most Washington-Wall Street elites. Americans intuitively understand that their after-inflation incomes haven’t risen for a decade. Even when incomes rose during the growth years from 2003-2007, the gains were undermined by the rising cost of housing, as well as by rising food and energy prices.

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Associated PressRepublican presidential candidate Rick Perry

Then huge chunks of middle-class net worth were wiped out in the panic. And now, even as the recovery is supposedly underway, their meager salary increases are being washed away with another burst of commodity inflation caused by near-zero interest rates and quantitative easing. This is what happens when politicians and central bankers try to use monetary policy to compensate for the slow growth caused by bad fiscal and regulatory policies.

The Texas Governor, or one of his advisers, may also have noticed that various economic sages are offering inflation as the solution to America’s debt problem. Harvard economist Kenneth Rogoff has suggested that an annual 4% to 6% rise in the price level over several years would do the trick. Assorted columnists are picking up the theme, and our guess is that the Obama Administration is privately on board. By all means, we need a debate in 2012 over Fed policy.

The U.S. also needs a debate over the Fed’s political independence. In our view, that independence has been compromised over the last 15 years as Messrs. Greenspan and Bernanke allowed themselves to get too close to the White House and Treasury. The Fed’s post-crisis interventions have put the central bank in the middle of decisions about fiscal policy and the allocation of credit. Mr. Bernanke sometimes seems to be a veritable arm of the Treasury, reinforcing its fiscal and regulatory agendas at every opportunity.

Note well that the main Fed dissenters from Mr. Bernanke’s monetary policy have been from the regional Fed banks. These bank presidents are appointed by regional boards, not by Presidents. One reform to consider is whether the Fed’s Open Market Committee, which sets monetary policy, should be changed to include more regional presidents who are better insulated from the political pressures of Washington.

Merely by raising the Fed as a subject, Mr. Perry has sent a political signal to the folks at the Eccles Building to tread carefully as they conduct monetary policy in the coming months. This alone is a public service. Mr. Perry and the other GOP candidates should be more careful in their language, and more precise about the Fed’s mistakes. But they shouldn’t shrink from debating the subject of sound money that is so crucial to restoring American prosperity.