In all likelihood, the critics predicting the end of the Rick Perry campaign have never stood before an audience to give unscripted answers to unrehearsed questioning. If they had, they would realize that the possibility to go blank exists in all of us.
I’m not a Rick Perry supporter, but I do believe that there are lapses in memory, as opposed to lapses in judgment.
Perry was debating the GOP contenders when he was asked to explain the three government agencies he had said he would eliminate. He quickly named two and then struggled for nearly a minute to come up with the name of the third. Finally, he uttered a plaintive “oops,” and admitted he could not recall the final item in his short list.
The Texas governor spent Thursday morning in damage control, making appearances on national television programs. He will deliver a “Top Ten List” on the “Late Show with David Letterman” on Thursday evening, undoubtedly a collection of jokey memory-related items. It is a penance Perry is enduring in an effort to keep his campaign on track.
Detractors say the gaffe could go down in modern political history as the prototypical candidate “brain freeze,” while others predicted it to be sufficiently catastrophic to end his presidential bid.
In truth, other candidates have survived similar missteps.
Experienced debaters – Perry obviously not among them – develop a fallback line of patter that can replace silence or divert attention from one topic to another. It is a skill that politicians use in providing a narrative that does not answer a posed question. Some interviewers realize the diversion, but many do not, allowing the subject to dodge a topic.
Debating skills may be necessary for participating in a political campaign, but they are not required for the office. Today’s media places undue emphasis on the off-the-cuff comments of candidates, such as the frequent confused utterings by GOP hopeful Michelle Bachmann.
There have been presidents with a plodding style that have served the country well, but would never have excelled at debate, and it is debatable whether the live debate forums do a service to the candidates and their views, or merely set them up for failure.
Meanwhile, Perry’s campaign is using the misstep as a fundraising device, asking supporters to send in $5 for every government agency they would like to forget.
