With Rick Perry’s campaign floating the idea of skipping some GOP presidential debates, there’s been a wave of speculation over whether this strategy would help or hurt him. Conn Carroll first suggested this strategy several weeks ago and yesterday, the Daily Caller’s Matt Lewis offered seven arguments for Perry missing at least some of the debates. As for the candidate himself, Jon Ward reports over at the Huffington Post: “I don’t know whether or not we’ll forgo any debates or not,” Perry said. “There’s going to be a lot of debates. I may get to be a good debater before this is all over.”
The best argument for skipping the debates is the simple cost benefit analysis. As bad as the blowback is for skipping the debates, a string of lousy performances is arguably worse. But I think Perry’s window for employing such a strategy has already closed.
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When Perry first entered the race, I think he could have gotten by skipping the first few debates. He could have said he was busy focusing on putting his team together, meeting voters, etc., and that there would be plenty of opportunities to debate down the road. He would have been critcized, no doubt. But he also would have been able to receive more briefings on the issues, generate his policy proposals and do more debate prep. So by the time he did enter the debates, perhaps they wouldn’t have been quite as disasterous.
At this point, though, if he starts skipping debates, it will just make him look weak, only reinforcing the sense that he’s not up to sparring with President Obama next fall, let alone tackling the job of being president. Effectively, the cost/benefit dynamic has shifted to the point where he’d probably be worse off by skipping debates.
That said, I’m not sure it would make a difference either way. Many of Perry’s bungles have come off the debate stage — such as calling Ben Bernanke “treasonous” and his recent birther comments. It’s hard to keep a presidential candidate in a bubble forever, and eventually, Perry was going to be exposed, for better or worse.
