Texas Gov. Rick Perry and his campaign were in full damage control mode as they attempted to spin Perry’s debate gaffe as humorous, going so far as to have Perry read the top ten on Letterman. As Jena McGregor reported:
You’ve got to give Rick Perry a little credit. Going on David Letterman and poking fun at himself—a prospect that meant talking about how handsome Mitt Romney is and quipping that Justin Bieber was his father—would not be easy for most people. Responding with humor to his quickly infamous flub, in which he repeatedly stumbled over naming the third government agency he’d eliminate, may have been a good idea.
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Texas Gov. Rick Perry makes a cameo on 'Late Night with David Letterman' to read the Top 10 List, which pokes fun at his famous flub during the CNBC Republican presidential debate. (Nov. 10)
To a point, that is. There is a limit to how much light you can make of a foul-up without people wondering how serious a leader you would be. For Perry, making himself look human is one thing. But trying to turn an “oops” into an asset feels like a stretch.
Perry’s team did just that when it began campaigning off his brain freeze, asking supporters in an email to “throw in a $5 contribution for every agency you would like to forget.” It even added a poll to its web site, asking people to vote on which agency they’d like to forget. On repeated morning talk show appearances Wednesday, Perry flashed his Texas grin again and again, telling viewers to head to rickperry.org and vote for which government department they’d prefer not to remember.
Laughing at himself for making such a big mistake probably helped Perry recover. But making light of such a monumental move—somehow eliminating three long-standing government agencies and the thousands of jobs that go with them—could also hurt him. By turning his gaffe into a talking point (there are so “damn many federal agencies” that you’d forget them too), he appeared glib, even flippant, about fundamental parts of the U.S. government and the thousands of people those agencies employ.
Maybe that’s just what the Republican electorate wants to hear. But I can’t help but think a better response for Perry would have been to joke about the brain freeze—scientists say it’s a normal response to stress, after all—and then quickly move on to talking about the critical problems this country faces and all the effort he has put into thinking about how to fix them. Instead, he seemed to be trying to capitalize on the mistake.
Will his Letterman antics work to assuage voters or further convince them that Rick Perry is not a contender strong enough to defeat President Obama in the general election? As Perry Bacon Jr. reported:
The one-time Republican front-runner spent Thursday appearing on every television program he could, making clear he knew he had “stepped in it” by not being able to recall the three government agencies he would close as president in a Wednesday night debate.
Appearing on the “Late Show with David Letterman,” (video after the jump) the Texas governor listed the “Top 10 Rick Perry excuses” for not recalling the Commerce, Education and Energy departments as on his chopping block.
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