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United States News Title: Miserable failure: Harry Reid’s debate performance A consensus appears to be emerging amongst the pundit class when it comes to Harry Reid’s performance in last night’s debate with Sharron Angle: He stank. The Las Vegas Review-Journal’s Sherman Frederick wrote: [...] Angle mopped the floor with Reid. She hit hard on a variety of topics; showed she had the fire to be a U.S. Senator; demonstrated a command of the issues; and, of course, stayed gaffe free. Reid meanwhile looked tired. Sounded entitled. He mixed up the Department of Education with the Department of Energy. Couldn’t find his notes for the close and generally fell back on talking points on far too many questions. The Las Vegas Sun’s Jon Ralston, not a fan of Angle’s, nevertheless declared her the winner of the debate (via): Sharron Angle won The Big Debate. Angle won because she looked relatively credible, appearing not to be the Wicked Witch of the West (Christine O’Donnell is the good witch of the Tea Party) and scoring many more rhetorical points. And she won because Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid looked as if he could barely stay on a linear argument, abruptly switching gears and failing to effectively parry or thrust. Whether the debate affects the outcome — I believe very few Nevadans are undecided — it also perfectly encapsulated the race: An aging senator who has mastered the inside political game but fundamentally does not seem to care about his public role (and is terrible at it) versus an ever-smiling political climber who can deliver message points but sometimes changes her message or denies a previous one even existed. Look upon these works, ye mighty, and despair. New Republic’s T.A. Frank whines: I could go on with my laments about Reid’s performance—about how he fumbled an answer on Social Security, about how he picked Antonin Scalia and Byron “Whizzer” White as particular Supreme Court favorites, about how he couldn’t find his closing statement and wound up shuffling through his papers and then reading something that didn’t really work anyway. But we’re all busy people. No, let’s not dwell on the past, the 12-long-hours-ago past. Anyway, the biggest problem wasn’t that Harry Reid is a bad debater, though that he clearly is. The trouble was that Reid faced an opponent of far stronger beliefs and far fewer scruples. In an appraisal of the rambling style of George Bush the Elder, Michael Kinsley once speculated on the relationship between convictions and manner of speaking. “A man anchored in true beliefs of some sort not only would be more articulate in expressing those beliefs,” wrote Kinsley. “He would make a better liar, too.” This was why “Ronald Reagan, a man of a few, clear, rock-hard beliefs, was a brilliant liar.” Harry Reid basically offered the truth, but with little conviction or coherence. Sharron Angle offered conviction and coherence, but with very little truth. You might prefer the former type of salesperson, but which one makes the sale? He actually has it backwards on who was lying and who was telling the truth, but we’ll give him credit anyway for declaring the obvious truth about how Reid’s debate performance, well, sucked.
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#1. To: no gnu taxes (#0)
When Harry met Sharon...she kicked his ASS.
November 2rd will be a most pleasing ass-kicking!
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