Last week’s Republican debate started out as a sleeper. No controversial stands. No sparring. No real debate at all. Fred Smith said he was best qualified because of his life experience. Pat McCrory said he was the man to deal with a crisis. Bill Graham said he’d listen to the people. Bob Orr explained he’s made tough decisions.

For a while it looked like the debate was going to be a cure for insomnia. Consider this question from the moderator: How are you going to bring swing voters into the Republican camp this election?

Fred Smith: With barbeques (Actually his answer was a lot longer, but this boils it down to the essentials).

Pat McCrory: By forming coalitions with Democrats. (He must think he’s running in the General Election; Republican voters probably aren’t interested in his skill at forming coalitions with Joe Hackney and Marc Basnight).

It went on that way until Pat McCrory said he had sixteen years (I may be off by a year or two) experience running government as a Mayor and City Councilman; then Fred Smith sat up and said, Wait a minute. That’s all the experience you’ve got? Running government? That doesn’t sound too good.

It was like a breath of fresh air.

And Smith wasn’t done. When McCrory said he wanted to change the State Constitution to make the Governor accountable for the quality of the schools, Smith retorted, That just shows you don’t understand government. The governor is accountable now.

This time Bob Orr piled on, taking a backhanded swipe at McCrory too, saying, McCrory’s plan sounded so much like his own that for a moment he thought McCrory had ‘hacked’ into his computer.

Then Smith opened the window wider still.

After Bill Graham waxed eloquent about his plan to cut government spending, Smith shot back, That’s not a plan that’s just talk.

After the debate the pundit’s generally gave McCrory or Graham the thumbs up. But my guess is the folks at WRAL – who generously gave an hour of free television time to the four candidates – were silently thanking Fred Smith for making the debate interesting. Here’s my abbreviated synopsis:

It’s not his fault but Bill Graham looks like an aging teenager. Gravitas is an over-used word but Graham needs more.

Pat McCrory’s talking to the wrong people – independents and swing voters.

Bob Orr made a major error when he said government doesn’t need to cut spending as much as it needs to spend money more efficiently.

And Fred Smith won. He was interesting. And the only one debating.

Click Here to discuss and comment on this and other articles.