The french call it l’esprit d’escalier, or translated to english as “staircase wit,” it’s that “I should have said…” comeback that only comes to mind seconds, minutes, or hours after the opportunity to burn your opponent has passed. If you live in a one story house or are confined to a wheelchair, you may never have experienced it because there’s no such thing as “l’esprit d’élévateur,” or “elevator wit.” You’ll just have to find a staircase like everyone else.Staircase wit is a valuable and frustrating thing and I’m sure the primary motivation for inventing a time machine… not to see dinosaurs, not to live out a Marty McFly fantasy, not even to go back to 2004 and whisper into Howard Dean’s ear “hey, maybe don’t make that weird screaming noise you make sometimes… there’re cameras here tonight.” … no, l’esprit d’escalier has inspired many to attempt time travel just to return to the moment following one’s most offensive and public insult and offer back the perfect, calmly delivered, most scathing of all retorts..the ultimate comeback.Watching the political debates lately shows that candidates debating actual issues was “so five elections ago”… what America needs, but more importantly what America WANTS, is witty comebacks, one liners that would put Die Hard’s John McClane (not John McCain) to shame, catch-phrases, and text-in surveys that let you vote for your favorite candidate no matter what Paula, Randy, and Simon think… because after all this is “American Candidate.” Furthermore, It makes you wonder where these candidates are getting their retorts from when all of the writers are on strike.More importantly how intense must presidential l’esprit d’escalier be compared to plain old garden-variety staircase wit? You don’t lose pride – you lose the white house!In a FoxNews focus group following the South Carolina republican debate moderated by Brit Hume and Carl Cameron (better known as Gollum of the wildly successful Lord of the Rings movies), a group of randomly selected Republican voters offered their analysis of the evening’s debate. As we all know, FoxNews has always had its finger on the pulse of America… unfortunately it used its thumb when taking the pulse which is inaccurate because after all, your thumb has it’s own pulse, but I digress… a pulse is a pulse and why shouldn’t America accept FoxNews’s as their own? Back to the point…. The randomly selected group of unbiased, neo-con, South Carolinian voters discussed how much they enjoyed the debate and thought Fred Thompson won. One woman commented “When [Fred Thompson] fired back those one-liners I liked that… that was great..” She went on to point out that Fred Thompson definitely won the debate because of this showing. Hmm. South Carolina’s primary is going to go to whoever can retort without the dreaded staircase wit and all of the sharpness of David Caruso in an opening of CSI. This focus-group went on to unanimously agree that Congressman Ron Paul lost the debate, which of course is true because he did, after all, spend way too much time talking about issues and problems that America should attempt to fix if we want to avoid total bankruptcy and and a collapse that would put Rome to shame. Like I said earlier – that was sooooo five elections ago. Ron Paul should have had witty comebacks, one-liners, and Mike Huckabee-esque full-grin rhetoric that sounds almost a little too-prosaic. He should have read from a script, he should have denounced his contradictory history – despite his not having one – because that’s what America wants… we don’t clap for the responsible father, we clap for the recovering pedophile alcoholic with white-supremacist tendencies….So… a word to the candidates… If you want to win this thing – you can’t afford to have l’esprit d’escalier, you have to have the comeback NOW. Because if it’s not in the soundbyte then we’re not listening… right America?