NOT READY FOR PRIME TIME

Jeanine Pirro, the GOP's Great Leggy Hope, kicked off her campaign to unseat Hillary Clinton yesterday. All did not go as planned:

She paused awkwardly for 32 seconds while reading her kickoff speech as she searched for a page of text, finally asking an aide, "Could I have Page 10?"

I can't get it to work, but I gather you can watch the 32-second pause via this local news outfit (scroll down to "Gaffe As Pirro Launches Campaign").

More from the Times:

And the campaign's decision to keep her husband, Albert, away from the announcements only seemed to invite questions.

Mr. Pirro, who was said to be working at his lobbying practice yesterday, has proved to be a liability at times in Ms. Pirro's 30-year career. He fathered a child with another woman in the 1990's and served 11 months in federal prison for his tax fraud conviction over returns Ms. Pirro also signed. (She was never charged with any wrongdoing.)

Facing reporters, Ms. Pirro ignored a question about whether she would take campaign donations from her husband, who is a prominent Republican donor, or let him raise money toward her goal of at least $30 million for the Senate race. Some political candidates rebuff donors with criminal records.

By day's end, a Pirro aide, Michael McKeon, said Mr. Pirro would not play a role in fund-raising, but Ms. Pirro would accept his money. Mr. McKeon said donations from people with criminal records would be reviewed "on a case by case basis."

Ben Smith of The New York Observer's Politicker blog has yet more:

And she doesn't know much about the issues on which she has newly taken positions. ABC's Mark Halperin stumped her with a question about how much her tax cutting plans would expand the deficit. She responded to questions about withdrawing, or adding, troops to Iraq by saying she'd defer to the "experts" ...

Er, Jeanine? You're running for Senate. If you're in the Senate, you're expected to be one of the "experts."

Oh, and the Politicker's Ben Smith has another Pirro campaign anecdote from Day One:

There was some competition for which reporter would first draw the epithet "asshole" from Mike McKeon, the tough former Pataki aide who is now Pirro's spokesman.

And I won!

The distinction came in response to a question about if, at some point, Pirro would learn about the issues.
"Don't be an asshole," McKeon said. "'At some point.'"

If McKeon had been an aide to Hillary, don't you think Ed Klein or Dick Morris would write a whole book about this incident?