Perry, Perry, Quite Ordinary
Whenever someone asked me my impression of Republican Presidential candidate Rick Perry I always said he reminded me of a movie where the best part is the trailer. So when I had the chance to see him up close and personal, I was hoping to be proven wrong and maybe I had judged him unfairly. After all, I of all people should know that people are different in person than on television. However, after watching his performance Wednesday, I concluded that if he were a film I would have have walked out and asked for my money back.
I have never seen such a poor performance from a candidate playing on the national stage. Herman Cain, John Huntsman and Mitt Romney all did well with their appearances in front of Indiana Republicans, but Rick Perry was just plain awful.
He was stiff (which led to several Viagra jokes being told). His pauses were awkward. At times when we didn’t know whether he lost his place or his thoughts. He read a speech that he should have been able to give at the drop of a dime. There wasn’t much new in the content, heck he was just did a debate the night before. And to make matters worse, he was late. One undecided Republican told me, “if you can’t show up to your event on time (when we know he was in Indy for a luncheon) I have no respect. I value my time… he didn’t value mine.”
Little things like that, along with a standard speech that was poorly delivered is not the way to impress the party faithful or win over the undecideds. I will say seeing him perform up close and personal made it easier to see why Romney and Cain are the front runners.
By the way, the audio of his speech is embedded at our sister blog, IndyPolitics.Org.
