Hayward: Impressions From The South Carolina Debate

The first debate between Republican presidential contenders was held in South Carolina Thursday night.  Not all of them were in attendance.  Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Sarah Palin, and Mike Huckabee were among the declared or likely contestants who didn’t attend.  The attendees were asked for their thoughts on the missing candidates, so we learned that Tim Pawlenty is very fond of Mike Huckabee, while Gary Johnson thinks Sarah Palin spends her time in Alaska crawling around ice floes on her hands and knees.

Donald Trump wasn’t there either, although I was hoping he would make a surprise appearance.  I envisioned a burst of flash powder and a column of gold smoke mixed with glitter, followed by a loud thump and some muffled cursing.  Trump would then stroll onto the stage, adjusting his tie and complaining that nobody had talked about screwing the Chinese yet.  Alas, it didn’t happen.

I doubt any of the candidates would have expected, two weeks ago, that so much of this debate would focus on foreign policy.  The shift in the national discussion after the death of bin Laden probably threw them all off their games - except for Ron Paul, who has been playing the exact same game for a long time, and wants the world to go away as much today as he did last year.  It’s good that all of the contenders found themselves on uncertain ground tonight.  We need to see what they do when the earth moves beneath them.

I thought Herman Cain won the evening, an opinion shared by the Fox News focus group convened immediately afterward.  He’s the most commanding orator of the group, and the one best able to think on his feet.  His weakest answer was the first one, covering foreign policy and the war in Afghanistan.  It was clearly not something he really wanted to talk about, and when some of the energy drains from his performance, the effect is dramatic.

During that exchange, Cain said he would trust “the experts” to advise him on a situation like Afghanistan.  Of course every President will have advice from experts, but right now the public is thinking that a galaxy of “experts” got us $14 trillion in debt… and that’s usually a feeling Cain is deeply in tune with.  In future debates, he should come armed with his own fully-formed opinions on all topics.  That’s hard to do.  So is running for President.

Cain was the best at planting rhetorical lawn darts in the memory of the audience, as when he said of President Obama’s bounce from the killing of Osama bin Laden: “One right decision doth not a great president make.”  When he said the word “outrageous,” I could see it hanging in the air, with hyphens in between the syllables.  He seemed far more prepared to defend the dramatic “Fair Tax” reform plan than Tim Pawlenty was to defend his gubernatorial record.

Cain’s stance on energy policy, and the importance of American energy independence, was a textbook example of how powerful a simple common-sense idea can be, when presented with supreme confidence.


More here