The debate... I dunno... one is tempted to say that if this is the best the greatest democracy on earth can do then, well... not good. Romney again is obviously the only guy up there that strikes one as presidential material, Perry's painful gaffe making that fact even more demonstrably clear - but Obama has the uber right so riled up with anger and fear and Romney is so not the guy to toss them the red meat they hunger for that I still think Cain, as frighteningly shallow and damaged and unprepared as he is, could surprise [again last night Cain showed he is basically incapable of speaking in depth on anything including his own policy proposals without resorting to the mindless incantation of empty slogans and catch phrases - and yet I read this morning supposed serious pundits claiming he 'performed well' - that it was indeed a performance I can agree with - that he did well in the sense of proving he was anything other than a character playing a role designed to appease and pander to the outraged angst of the uber right, then no, definitely not].
Of course the format by default encourages nonsense - moderators feel compelled to ask too many questions and that problem is aggravated further by there being too many candidates who are provided virtually no opportunity to interact and so a real and substantive debate becomes impossible thus forcing participants to consequently focus entirely on two things: don't make a mistake [sorry, Perry, you're toast] and efforts to squeeze out some little sound bite or applause line, no matter how utterly superficial it may be, that hopefully gets played on the morning news and causes the average clueless voter to go "Hey, that kinda makes sense... I guess... I dunno... seems like a nice guy anyway..." It's really rather pathetic.
