GOP fields impressive candidates, great first debate

I have to say that when Calista and I watched the Republican national debate, we were impressed. We know most of those folks, we’ve been through debates, as you know, when I ran for President 2012. So I was used to being on that big stage.

I thought, first of all, that Fox did a pretty good job. I thought that the fact is that they avoided getting into just having the whole evening be about Donald Trump. They raised a whole bunch of serious issues. And I thought one ballot is a pretty darn good achievement.

Second, I thought the candidates generally were very articulate, very smart, clearly willing to take on each other. And I found it kind of interesting when you watch some of the personality dynamics. Here, you have second only to the Governor of Florida, a 38-year-old entrepreneur, Vivek Ramaswamy, who’s standing at the center of the stage.

He has on one side, a former governor and United Nations Ambassador, and a US Senator. He has on the other side, the former Governor of New Jersey, the former Governor of Arkansas, and a Vice President of the United States, on I should have mentioned, he also has the Governor of North Dakota.

And here’s this guy, 38 years old, right in the middle of the big time. And he did, I think a pretty darn good job. I have friends who are skeptical. One of them wrote me a note and said, you know, he reminded him of a preacher who was very articulate, but didn’t know how to get anything done. We’ll see. But at least he’s now on the national stage, he is going to be a factor. And I think he has, at 38, a great future as one of the leaders who will help us get this country back on the right track.

I thought that, frankly, Ron DeSantis did a fine job. It wasn’t overwhelming, but it was solid, stable. In some ways, he was the most adult-like person in the room. And I really liked the way he handled things. And I liked the way that he rejected the effort to get people to raise their hands at one point and just said to the moderators, you know, we’re not children. So I would give DeSantis pretty good marks last night, I think he achieved what he had to, to keep his donors happy, and to keep his campaign moving forward.

I think that Vice President Pence is a very decent, very reasonable human being. But I think he’s got a very hard time breaking out because of the anger the Trump people have.

I think Chris Christie is almost funny. He’s a very good debater. He was a very good litigator, he was a prosecuting attorney. But in the end, I don’t think his exchanges with other people helped him any. Because it just, you know, in the end, I think there’s something about him that’s not quite likable.

I don’t understand why Asa Hutchinson is there, he was Governor of Arkansas, he’s a congressman. He was in charge of the border at one time. But I didn’t think he had much energy or much focus.

Similarly, Governor Burgum of North Dakota is a billionaire. He can certainly afford to be there. But I’m not sure what he accomplishes. I didn’t think he had a particularly strong performance.

I thought that Nikki Haley really played well off of her foreign policy experience. As the former Ambassador to the United Nations, she knows a lot about foreign policy. I thought her sort of an internal debate between she and Vivek Ramaswamy was interesting. And I thought she did a very good job of standing up for what she believes.

I think Tim Scott is a wonderful human being. And I admire him, and I like him. But I thought last night, he didn’t quite get on track. He, he had some standard things he’d been saying, and he just repeated them. But he had a couple of occasions when he could have hit it out of the park, and galvanized the audience. And for one reason or another, he didn’t do it.

So I will tell you, both Chris and I left the debate last night after two hours thinking we’re looking forward to the Reagan Library debate in September. And in a way it was good not to have Trump there. Because these folks got to perform, talk, debate, and had Trump been there, he would have been so dominant, that they would never have emerged.

Now, I personally think Trump’s gonna be the nominee. I think we’re looking at people who are in a sense auditioning for Vice President or auditioning to be in the cabinet. But I was pretty proud of the Republican Party. I thought that was a lot of talent. And I think about Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, and whether or not they could have stayed on that stage. That wouldn’t have lasted five minutes.