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.”