We do not generally look to gubernatorial debates for excitement. But this week there was a fascinating one in Arizona, where Gov. Jan Brewer gave a bad performance of epic proportions. Really, Richard Nixon in 1960 was Demosthenes in Athens compared with this one.

Brewer began by blanking out during her introductory statement  there was this horrible 16-second interval where she went silent, stared down at her notes and giggled. The evening ended when she stomped away from reporters who were yelling: “Governor, please answer the question about the headless bodies.”

Everyone knows you never want to finish a big campaign night on a headless-body note.

Brewer is an unelected governor, a Republican who moved into the job when Janet Napolitano, a Democrat, was named secretary of homeland security. (Someday, when things are calmer, we may want to discuss whether it was really a good idea for President Obama to fill his administration with senators and governors from swing states.) She is trying to win a term in her own right by running almost exclusively on her support for that new Arizona law aimed at cracking down on undocumented immigrants.

The governor has been on national programs on Fox 20 times since April to talk about illegal immigration, but she has been generally unavailable to the Arizona reporters. I learned this from the postdebate newscast on the local Fox outlet in Phoenix, where the reporter Steve Krafft complained about her propensity to stonewall the state’s news media in favor of the national shows. During the postdebate confrontation, “I locked eyes with her,” said Krafft. “She was looking right at me as if perhaps, maybe, I might ask some question and bail her out. ... but all of us wanted an answer.”