Ken Berwitz
Republican presidential aspirant Marco Rubio just finished an interview on the Today Show.
All Matt Lauer and Savannah Guthrie wanted to ask about was his “bad” performance in the last debate, where he kept saying that President Obama “knows exactly what he is doing”, thus creating the impression he wasn\’t thinking, but just working from a memorized script – which Chris Christie brought home very effectively (not effectively enough to be a viable candidate, though, as last night\’s vote showed).
So what was Senator Rubio\’s answer to Mr. Lauer and Ms. Guthrie? He said “that will never happen again” a minimum of four times, at different points in the interview…
…thus creating the impression he wasn\’t thinking, but just working from a memorized script.
And the sad part is that, other than his parroting of the same line over and over again, Mr. Rubio gave an excellent interview in which he made a strong case for his presidential run – just as, other than repeating the line about President Obama, he had a strong debate performance last week.
When media latch on to something like this, no matter how ridiculous and inconsequential it is, a smart candidate finds ways of deflating it. Marco Rubio, this morning, found a way of reinforcing it.
If that isn\’t shooting himself in the foot, what is?
