Are debates about performance? If they are, Mitt Romney slaughtered Rick Perry last night at the Fox News/Google debate in Florida. But it’s not all about performance. It’s also about political character. And there the answer is more troubling for Romney.
First, give Romney his due: Running for president non-stop for nearly five years has conferred a confidence on him and a comfort with issues that has turned the colorless robot of 2008 into the old smoothie of 2011.
And Perry? Awful. Just awful. After the first half hour he seemed unable to speak a coherent sentence, even when he was carefully prepared — and he made a cringe-inducing bungle of a rehearsed soundbite about Romney’s flip-flopping.
It was one of the worst moments I can remember. And it tells you something about the problem with Perry’s late entry in the race. That brilliant play got him the lead in the polls in a matter of days and spared him eight months of campaigning. But in the month since, he has shown the weaknesses of a candidate unprepared for the rigors of a presidential run — for the need to be able to speak easily, fluently, knowledgeably, and with some semblance of wit, on just about every conceivable subject.
Romney’s had five years to warm up. Perry’s had to get up to speed in five weeks, and he hasn’t.
Perry also had a highly problematic moment substantively, when called upon to defend his support of a measure that allowed the children of illegal immigrants living in Texas the right to pay the same low college tuition at state universities as in-state citizens.
Perry’s defense was unfortunate, to put it mildly: “If you say that we should not educate children who have come into our state for no other reason than they have been brought there by no fault of their own,” he said, “I don’t think you have a heart.”
That might be an acceptable thing to say about those who opposed mandatory elementary and secondary schooling for illegals, but to say that it is heartless to oppose an in-state tuition subsidy to illegals is unquestionably offensive.
And yet maybe Perry’s debate wasn’t all awful. Far from it. The thing is, debates aren’t only about performance; they are also about the way the interchanges reveal the character of the candidates — their political character.
Do they stand up for what they believe? Do they believe in anything, or are they just willing to say whatever their audiences want to hear?
And in that regard, Romney did not perform well at all.
In the opening of the debate, Romney went after Perry for statements in his book, “Fed Up,” about Social Security and the problems with the direct election of senators. And Perry lowered the boom on him. Romney, he noted, changed his line on his own health-care plan in the text of the paperback version of his book “No Apology.”
Words poured from Romney’s mouth like smoke from a wildfire. He zoomed through sentences impossible to follow as he tried to deny that he had done what he had in fact done, which was scrub his own book as his own position changed.
The speed with which he spoke recalled the flim-flam salesman Harold Hill, clouding the minds of innocent Iowans as he raced through the song “Trouble in River City” in “The Music Man.”
Even more telling, Perry hit Romney for speaking well of President Obama’s “Race to the Top” initiative, as implemented by Education Secretary Arne Duncan–which Romney absolutely did in Miami on Wednesday. “I think Secretary Duncan has done some good things,” he said, as reported by Politico. “I hope that’s not heresy in this room.”
Romney denied it–a huge blunder, because this contradiction can be thrown back at him daily until the campaign is over. And because it speaks to precisely the reason Romney has been unable to make the sale with Republicans despite his incredible persistence in wooing them over the course of five years. He comes across as false, somehow.
Is unprepared and graceless worse than smooth and false in the eyes of voters desperate for authenticity? I don’t think so.