Quote of the Day: On Rick Perry’s Debate “Oops!” Moment
Our political Quote of the Day comes from Mark McKinnon’ writing in The Daily Beast about Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s forgetting his own talking points at last nights GOP Presidential debate:
Rick Perry is now the official Charlie Brown of presidential candidates. He reminds me of the kid who got held back in high school. Even though he’s been there longer than the rest of the class (or governor for 10 years), he still doesn’t know the answers.
It’s one thing to not be able to tick off all of Mitt Romney’s 59-point economic plan. Or even a 10-point plan. But when you can’t get past two in a three-point plan, you’re done. Disqualified.
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Perry is now a dead man walking. He’ll go through the motions to save face, but he won’t get a single new voter. And he will quickly lose the ones he had. Once they’re laughing at you, you’re finished. Perry supporters Wednesday night were running out in the dark and pulling out yard signs.
AND:
The debate was substantive and full of relevant and tough questions.
But, there’s only one story from Wednesday night. Last rites for Rick Perry. There will be no resurrection. No second act. He will join the political hall of fame of presidential losers from Texas like John Connally and Phil Gramm, who started with bang and went out with a whimper and no delegates.
Perry’s problem is not just that moment. His problem is that he has come across from the get-go as an overhyped, well-financed candidate who didn’t seem to be willing or able to do his homework. Many of us who do live performances or talks have had bad moments where we flinch. With Perry, his bad moments have become a pattern.
He has a big campaign bankroll. He can use it and hang in there.
But a lot of it would now have to be used to play catch up. On YouTube. From that unusual speech in New Hampshire coupled with his earlier debate performances, coupled with his being unable to remember one of the three agencies he says he wants to eliminate.
It’s the context. In the totality, Rick Perry proved to be hype, money, pepperer with lots of advance ideological idolization — but not ready for Prime Time.
Or Republican debates.
And if current standards — fair or not– of how candidates appear in public are applied to him, not ready for the Oval Office.
2 Responses to “Quote of the Day: On Rick Perry’s Debate “Oops!” Moment”
The pathos was manifested last night through the nervous laughs heard being emitted by some in the live audience, and my own low moan while watching Rick Perry’s meltdown in a room by myself.
It happened…Humpty Dumpty had a great fall…and all the King’s horses, and all the King’s men, cannot get Humpty together again.
I can only hope that Texas lawmaker’s will now see the error of their ways in trying to grow up to be like Rick Perry. He has shown himself to be flawed and not worthy of unfettered fealty.
I haven’t paid much attention to Perry, because I have already established in my mind that he is too conservative for me to vote for. But I’m have to say that the hubbub here is an encapsulation of one of the problems with the US’s political system.
Everyone knows that capable people can sometime block on a name and so it says little about his qualification to be president. Yet the airwaves and blogs are filled with talk about it. (Mostly by people who themselves don’t care about the actual incident, just what political hay they can make.) After all, US politics isn’t about the issues, just about how you can demonize and attack the other side.
Of course some say that, as the author does here, that the problem isn’t the incident itself, but some broader failing. But I don’t see how filling the airwaves and blogs with this incident does much to establish those broader failings.