Politics

Rick Perry Excuses

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I was playing poker on Wednesday night, so I did not watch the presidential debate, but I gathered from Jesse Walker's tweets that something entertaining had happened. The New York Times had no coverage of the debate yesterday because the news was too fresh, and it had no coverage today because the news was too stale. But it did run a story about the reaction to Perry's "debate stumble," which it described this way in the ninth paragraph: "53 seconds in which Mr. Perry struggled to name the third government agency he proposes to eliminate—the Department of Energy." This made me imagine nearly a minute of silence, punctuated only by Perry's ums and ers. Watching the segment on YouTube, I saw that it was not quite that bad, but still pretty amazing, especially since it was Perry who introduced the topic, beginning a sentence he was not equipped to finish. The slow realization by the moderator and Perry's rivals that he's not kidding is painfully priceless. Perry did much better on last night's Late Night With David Letterman, where he delivered "Top Ten Rick Perry Excuses." Below is a version that includes Letterman's monologue, which was dominated by jokes about Perry.