LAST NIGHT'S DEBATE, SUMMED UP IN ONE SENTENCE

All of the Republican candidates for president believe that the greatest threat America faces is a Hillary Clinton presidency -- and apparently all but one of the Democratic candidates for president agree.

Nice to see that, after all these years of partisan divisiveness, our politicians have come to an agreement on one thing.

*****

I say this even though I didn't watch the debate. All I know is what I read in the papers this morning.

Last night, by contrast, I was reading debate liveblogging from a couple of sources, with local TV news on in the background, and I was under the mistaken impression that Joe Biden's Rudy Giuliani quip -- "There's only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun and a verb and 9/11" -- was the hit of the night. Apparently he did connect -- the local news did excerpt it (anything to do with Giuliani is seen as local interest, which isn't true about Hillary), but it's buried in the New York Times debate recap and not mentioned at all in the Washington Post recap.

It's too bad. It's a pretty good line, even if Biden garbled it somewhat. We can talk about "Rovian jujitsu," turning someone's strength into a weakness, but it's really just basic comedy, attacking a pompous man by going at the main thing he's pompous about. If Democrats were like Republicans, every Democrat who got within two feet of a microphone would be doing variations on this line for the next week and a half, displaying message discipline, until Giuliani was forced to answer the question: Do you talk about 9/11 too damn much? Do you throw it into everything you say, even when it's totally appropriate?

But these are Democrats we're talking about, so, of course, nothing like that will happen. All we'll hear is how horrible Hillary is.

*****

Giuliani's communications director sent out a press release after the debate. It said this about Joe Biden:

...The good Senator is quite correct that there are many differences between Rudy and him. For starters, Rudy rarely reads prepared speeches and when he does he isn't prone to ripping off the text from others. And, Senator Biden certainly falls in to the bucket of those on the stage tonight who have never had executive experience and have never run anything. Wait, I take that back, Senator Biden has never run anything but his mouth. Such a desperate attack from Senator Biden is to be expected considering I -- Katie Levinson -- have a better chance of becoming President than he does.

Is it me, or is this just a few degrees nastier than the usual rebuttal spin?

Is this what press briefings are going to be like when Giuliani is president -- some nasty Coulter wannabe lashing out at questioners the way the boss lashes out at ferret owners?