Thompson held his own?

An interesting comment from Jay Cost, who got a straw poll of his readers to give their responses to Thompson's debate performance last Tuesday. They were generally skewed towards the negative. Here's the reader response he took to be about average: "Overall, I thought Thompson did what he needed to do, which was to look like he belonged on the stage. He didn't blow anybody out of the water, but he looked Presidential, didn't appear nervous, and sounded like he knew what he was talking about."

This might be a victory for Thompson in the end. The stories on the debate I heard and saw were all generally positive on Thompson's performance, and that is all most people heard. At this point, as Cost always emphasizes, the audience is the elites. The colloquy between Romney and Giuliani that also got a lot of coverage left Thompson out. That's not such a bad thing for Thompson. He's still learning how to be a candidate; as Cost points out it's a different situation for an actor who's used to memorizing lines.

So even though the comments were negative, as I believe they should have been, overall it was not such a bad night for Thompson, as long as he can improve his performances. That's the key. He's not going to make a run at the nomination if he doesn't become a better speaker, a better debater, better on the stump, and uses issues to his advantage, as I said in my last post. The likelihood of this is low, which is why I'm so down on his candidacy.