I Watched Ted Cruz Debate in College. Don’t Count Him Out.

Ted Cruz was a king in Par­lia­ment­ary De­bate Land.

.. In­deed, emo­tion — not just in­tel­li­gence — was very much in Cruz’s skill set.

.. The oth­er team, Vin­nakota re­calls, had “crushed Ted’s ar­gu­ment.” By the time Cruz ar­rived on­stage to speak a fi­nal time, the case was “dead on ar­rival.” “But Ted gave one of the most im­pas­sioned, flour­ished speeches. His fo­cused an­ger and the power of his rhet­or­ic just won over the crowd. If you were flow­ing the ar­gu­ment” — chart­ing the de­bate — “he didn’t say any­thing. You have to be im­pressed by it. He is a gif­ted, gif­ted speak­er.”

.. THE CHAL­LENGE FOR Cruz — which The New York Times high­lighted sev­er­al months ago in a piece about his de­bat­ing ca­reer — was that he wasn’t ne­ces­sar­ily likable. “I re­mem­ber him as a scary, driv­en ma­chine who fought a pro­trac­ted, bloody land war for total vic­tory,” says Ted Nib­lock, a Johns Hop­kins Uni­versity de­bater in Cruz’s year who is now gen­er­al coun­sel for a clean-en­ergy star­tup.

.. “I was not as smart, com­mit­ted, or skilled as Ted was,” says Nib­lock. “I was com­pletely ran­dom and un­pre­dict­able. You can’t out­smart a truly crazy per­son.”

.. This might be my biggest prob­lem with him: He took all the fun out of it. He pre­pared and pre­pared, came to the tour­na­ment on the week­end, ex­ecuted his plan, and then went back to Prin­ceton to take the fun out of something else.”