“Oops…”-Rick Perry, November 9, 2011

Anyone can draw a blank while trying to recall or recite an important point in front of a large group of people. Most of us have experienced or vividly imagined that feeling of panic that follows the realization that we have lost our mental grasp on an idea and knowing it is not coming back. It is a feeling so lonely and intense that witnessing it happen to someone else evokes empathy, even if it happens to someone we don’t know or particularly like.

I had a fleeting bout of cringe-inducing empathy as I watched Rick Perry stumble, stammer, and fizzle during tonight’s Republican presidential debate from suburban Detroit. Perry was talkin’ tough about the federal departments he would eliminate as President when–for a minute that for him must have seemed like an hour–he careened off the cliffs of recollection.

“I’ll tell you: it’s three agencies of government, when I get there, that are gone: Commerce, education and, the –uh — what’s the third one there? … Commerce, education and the uh, the uh…The third agency of government I would do away with — education, the, uh, commerce, and let’s see — I can’t. The third one, I can’t. Sorry. Oops“

Oops. Four letters, one syllable that capture the abject disaster that has been the 2012 Perry campaign. Alternately reckless, wandering, weird, and underwhelming, Perry finally made a lasting mark on this election season–as an empty blowhard who flailed more spectacularly than anyone in the history of American presidential primary debates.