As you all know, the other night in the Republican debate, Texas guv'nor Rick Perry had a little trouble remembering the third of three government agencies he wanted to abolish. Pundits are calling it the greatest political gaffe of all time and I just watched Jon Stewart and Jay Leno have enormous fun with it on their shows tonight.
I may be alone in this viewpoint but it doesn't seem like that big a thing to me. So the guy froze up on live television and his brain skipped a channel and he looked foolish. If there was a chance in the world I might vote for this guy, this would not make me any less likely to vote for him. It isn't about his ideas for policy and what he'd do as president. It isn't really even about his intelligence. I have plenty of reasons in both of those categories to hope this man never gets near the Oval Office but nowhere in that list is "had one memory lapse on television."
I did not watch this debate live. When I heard about this greatest gaffe in history, I eagerly made a dash for a YouTube video to see what it was. I mean, I'm quite in favor of Rick Perry being so humiliated that his White House ambitions end. But when I saw the clip, I thought, "That's it? That's nothing?" For the record, and not just to draw a partisan equivalency, I feel that way about most Joe Biden statements that get hailed as withering foot-in-mouth gaffes.
Human beings make mistakes…and no matter what their particular opponents may claim, politicians are human. Except maybe Newt.