Not so slick Rick stumbles at debate
You have to feel just a little sorry for Rick Perry. We have all had one of those moments when the cameras are pointing, the lights are blinding and the words are missing. Luckily most of us aren’t running for President of the United States.
The governor of Texas has no such luxury. He put the pregnant back into pauses last night at the one debate he really needed to triumph at to dispel mounting doubts that he simply cannot do the verbal back and forth.
It is Perry’s misfortune that the election cycle of 2011/12 has been punctuated by an almost inhuman rash of debates. Nine so far. Nine still to come. If you like debating like the puffed up but verbally nimble Newt Gingrich you feel like a pig in clover. But, if like Rick Perry you hate debating on prime time TV you feel like a pig to slaughter.
It is especially embarrassing when you go out of your way to tout a three point plan and then fail to remember the third point for 53 seconds. Long enough to make a cup of tea, go to the bathroom, say the Lord’s prayer. Rightly or wrongly the electorate feels that being able to remember three basic facts should be one of the minimum requirements for running the still most powerful nation on the planet.
Such was the cringe-inducing embarrassment at Perry’s lapse of memory that even his opponents tried to help him out before erupting in hails of laughter. In the media spin room the gaggle of reporters was lost for words as Perry was groping for his.
The governor tried to turn last night’s blunder into today’s strength. “We already have a debater-in-chief in the White House”, he told FOX TV, trying to turn Obama’s verbal dexterity into a dark art mastered by the snooty Ivy League elite. George W Bush used to trade successfully on his own verbal collateral damage, claiming that less fake polish meant more true grit. But after 8 years of W and his Bushisms the American public also had their fill of missing synapses.
All this is entertaining but it also matters. The Republicans should be able to win the next election if they can only find a candidate to fall and stay in love with. In the sultry heat of summer Perry still looked like that man. Since taking over from Bush as governor of Texas this erstwhile front runner has presided over a robust, oil-based economy, which has produced more jobs than it has lost. He is a committed social conservative, a born-again Christian and a genuine full blooded Texan who famously jogs with a gun and prays for the Dow to go up.
As Perry has gone from swagger to stagger Herman Cain, the candidate who had gone from swagger to slobber all week was enjoying a brief moment away from the limelight.
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