Lexington's notebook

PEOPLE respond to presidential debates in very personal ways, but for me it was Romney by a mile at the GOP's Presidency 5 debate in Orlando, Florida tonight. He was the only candidate who looked remotely presidential, especially by comparison to Rick Perry, the new front-runner in the polls, who came over as nervous and ill-prepared. Perry is still incoherent on Social Security, and waffled embarrassingly as soon as he was pulled out of his comfort zone, for example when asked how he would respond to a nuclear-weapons crisis in Pakistan.

I AM reprimanded by colleagues at The Economist for having called the downfall of Qaddafi's regime a score for Obama. Apparently this is "ridiculously premature, and embarrassingly insular". After all, things may still go wrong in Libya, it's too early to tell, etc.

Well of course things will still go wrong in Libya. By the same token, the whole Arab spring might very well yet give rise to a long winter of chaos and reaction. It is hardly reasonable to expect societies that have been long suppressed by mass-murdering dictators to leap in one bound all the way directly to perfect liberal democracy.

SO TIM PAWLENTY is getting out. He failed miserably in Iowa. So did I, having predicted that he woud defy expectations and do well. But that's not why I find his early exit depressing. Watching him on the hustings yesterday trying to feign a righteous anger he does not feel, I could only hear Yeats. The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. Does American politics really have to be filled with such rage?

AS MANY have said, the Fox team behind last night's GOP debate in Ames, Iowa, did a brilliant job. They provoked, cornered and ambushed the candidates, thereby forcing them to push back and quarrel, and reveal far more about themselves than they did at the tepid CNN debate in New Hampshire in June. Nonetheless, at a breakfast meeting the following morning with Tim Pawlenty I was struck anew by what a misleading medium the debate format is. Though he tried hard to put on a more forceful show last night, Minnesota's former governor is a far more talented politician than you might think if you judged him only by his television appearances.

THINGS have come to such a pass that my friend the Liberal Curmudgeon, the Cincinnatus of Loudon County, has come out of retirement to blast the GOP. An extract:

Don't expect humorous self-awareness from the current crowd of Joan of Arcs infesting the national Republican party. Having redefined "fiscal responsibility" as refusing to pay obligations one has already incurred, the Republicans long ago left the world where words and principles bear any passing relation to one another.

FOR readers not basking in the 100-degree humidity of Washington this Friday, believe me. The debt crisis would be solved in the twinkling of an eye if the politicians had to step outside and conduct their negotiations away from air-conditioning. If there is a default, it might be the first default in history caused by air conditioning.

MY PRINT column in tomorrow's Economist looks at Rick Perry and makes the point that, if he runs for the Republican nomination, job-creation in Texas will come under closer national scrutiny. It has, indeed, already started. See a lively discussion forum in the New York Times here.