user: Scout’s Honor, Texas Style

At U.T., Mr. Tillerson steered clear of fraternity excesses as not exactly résumé building for strait-laced Exxon recruiters. Instead, he excelled at the school of engineering, a real draw for the big oil companies, and contented himself with membership in honorary societies like the old-line Tejas Club, which has more in common with the Boy Scouts than “Animal House.”

In other words, both men are shrewd judges and dedicated followers of the path to success, as they would define it.

Say what you will about Mr. Perry’s policies on education, the environment and health care, but it’s widely accepted in Texas that he had no equal as a politician. He saw the winds shifting from Democratic to Republican long before most others, and he switched allegiance as the party of L.B.J. and Ann Richards lapsed into helplessness. Later, when most Texas Republicans still worshiped the Bush wing of the party, Mr. Perry embraced the rise of the Tea Party — even if that meant flirting with birtherism and suggesting that the BP oil spill could have been an act of God.

Mr. Perry’s goal wasn’t to do good, but to stay in power. So he did, longer than any other governor in Texas’ history.

This explains why no one here was surprised when it came time to walk back his harsh remarks about Mr. Trump. Sure, Mr. Perry had called the candidacy of his onetime presidential rival “a cancer on conservatism,” deriding his style as “a toxic mix of demagoguery, meanspiritedness and nonsense that will lead the Republican Party to perdition if pursued.” But when opportunity knocked for Mr. Perry, perdition looked just fine.

Mr. Tillerson’s ascent has been less swervy, but involved a similar climb up a greasy pole. Exxon is another country, and proud of it. The corporate milieu is like Harvard crossed with the former Soviet Union: a culture of excellence combined with a set of rules that are byzantine and uncontestable. No one talks to the press.

The company is known to hire its executives right out of college and to rarely go outside after that. Everyone works their way up, serving time in facilities like the giant Baytown refinery east of Houston, before learning how to negotiate with foreign potentates and gaining a spot in the C-suite.

A knowledge of power and how to wield it is mandatory. Small companies are mere prey waiting to be swallowed up. If George W. Bush had worked at Exxon, he would have known better than to look for a soul in Vladimir V. Putin’s eyes. As one oilman put it, “Tillerson didn’t get to be C.E.O. of Exxon because he’s a nice guy.”

Reward your friends and punish your enemies. That maxim may not be in the Boy Scout handbook, but that’s how these guys roll.

Mimi Swartz, an executive editor at Texas Monthly, is a contributing opinion writer.

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A version of this op-ed appears in print on December 20, 2016, on Page A27 of the New York edition with the headline: Scout’s Honor, Texas Style. Today's Paper|Subscribe

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assistant: The two Texans picked for Trump’s cabinet, Rick Perry and Rex Tillerson, share an instinct for using power and keeping it.