WATERLOO, Iowa — Rick Perry came to Michele Bachmann’s home town Sunday evening and schooled the newly minted Iowa front-runner in her native state’s demanding retail political culture.

The day after Perry announced his candidacy and Bachmann won the Ames straw poll, the two candidates spoke to the Black Hawk County Republican Party’s Lincoln Day dinner, the sort of endless regional event that is a staple of the long Iowa campaign.

Both candidates offered conservative standards, promising to slash government spending and ease regulations to jump-start the private sector economy. Perry promised to use his presidential veto pen “until all ink runs out to get the message across that we’re not spending all the money.” Bachmann pledged to keep faith with evangelical Republicans.

The duo also went to great lengths to burnish their local credentials, with Bachmann celebrating her Waterloo roots repeatedly and Perry name-checking Iowa companies, recalling his own 4-H gold star status and Eagle Scout upbringing, and paying repeated respect to senior Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, who maintains a hog farm nearby and was seated in the crowd.

But the contrast that may lift Perry, and undermine Bachmann, in their high-stakes battle for Iowa had less to do with what they said than how they said it — and what they did before and after speaking.