Rick Perry’s presidential campaign is furiously working to control the damage following an embarrassing gaffe in Wednesday’s presidential debate.

Perry made appearances on three morning talk shows Thursday to fess up for the mistake, in which he forgot that the Department of Energy is a third federal agency he’s said he’d like to eliminate.

“I will tell you that I don’t mind saying clearly that I stepped in it last night,” he said Thursday on NBC’s “Today Show.”

“But I think I’m kind of like most Americans, and there are so many agencies of government that they’d like to forget, that the Department of Energy was one of those,” said Perry, who smiled and chuckled about the mistake.

Perry’s campaign sent an email to supporters on pointing out the gaffes of previous presidents.

“We’ve all had human moments,” the email said before referring to verbal slip-ups by Presidents Obama, Reagan and Ford.

The Perry campaign is also directing supporters to a website where they can vote on which government agencies should be forgotten.

Wednesday’s embarrassing moment is the latest in a series of errors during debates that have been sinking Perry’s campaign.

When he entered the race in August, he shot to the top of polls and was seen as the conservative candidate who could take out Mitt Romney. Perry has served for more than a decade as governor of Texas, and can tout a growing state economy that has created jobs. He also has money and an organized campaign that seemed like it would give him an advantage over more cash-strapped candidates.

But Perry has been a disaster in the debates, and his frequent slip-ups while engaging with his rival candidates have contributed to falling poll numbers. GOP strategists on Wednesday were openly mulling whether he could survive the latest mistake, though Perry said Thursday he would remain in the race.

According to the Real Clear Politics average, Perry is in fifth place in Iowa with 7.5 percent of the vote, and in sixth place in New Hampshire with only 3.3 percent.

Perhaps most devastatingly, Perry is in fourth place in South Carolina at 10.3 percent. The Texas governor was hoping for a boost from the Palmetto State where his campaign is headquartered and where he first announced his candidacy.

Perry’s campaign has acknowledged he’s not the smoothest debater, but argues he’s the most principled conservative in the Republican field.

That message is an attack on Romney, who many on the right believe has shifted his positions on some issues, including healthcare, and also on businessman Herman Cain, who has supplanted Perry at the top of polls.

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