And no, it wasn’t Erick who did that. It was John King.

Background: there was a debate on Monday night between Alex Sink and Republican Rick Scott. There had been an agreement beforehand that there would be no notes or outside help… and Sink promptly ignored said agreement by taking advice from a campaign staffer via cell phone.  The staffer has since been fired; and that might have been it… except that Sink last night decided to double down on stupid by claiming that she didn’t know that the call had been politically-related when she took it.  Relevant quote: “…the makeup artist held up her phone and said ‘I just got this message, I don’t know who it’s from…'”

CNN says… no, actually, that’s not what we heard.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_NDEs2WSnE&feature=player_embedded[/youtube]

Relevant quote there: “But we listened very closely to the audio, and the makeup artist, when she approached Alex Sink, said ‘I have a message from the staff.’ And at that point they looked, it was on a cell phone, it was two sentences…”

It’s not that Alex Sink made a mistake, really: it’s that she lied about it afterward.  In some ways, it’s worse that she lied so badly at it.  Everybody makes mistakes, after all – and it’s probably exceptionally unreasonable to expect politicians to maintain 100% veracity at all times, under all circumstances, with no exceptions.  But this was an impromptu test in Sink’s ability to operate well under pressure, and she flunked it handily.  We’re just fortunate to find out about it now.

Also: did Sink really need to be told to be more aggressive towards her challenger?  That’s like being told to not pick your nose on national television.  If you have to give that kind of elementary debate advice…

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: Rick Scott for Governor, of course.