Rick Perry is in­cred­ibly bad at debates

(By Jonathan Bernstein, The Washington Post) - There’s just no getting around it: Rick Perry’s inept performances are dominating these debates. The highlight, or perhaps the lowlight, of tonight’s Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire was a direct question to Perry about health care, in which he managed to avoid taking a single shot at Mitt Romney. But throughout the debate, he went back and forth between garbling his answers and simply disappearing for large stretches. He showed up for a debate on the economy with nothing to say on the economy other than that his economic plan wasn’t ready yet, and apparently he decided to avoid his difficulty in delivering prepared zingers by not bothering to even try any. Just incredible.

Debates, and debate performances, are generally not nearly as important as they’re often made out to be, but Perry is apparently guaranteed to launch a huge dark cloud over his candidacy every time he gets together with the rest of the gang. Even if everything else were going well for him, it might just be too much to overcome.