The Chuy we have been waiting for.

Candidate debates often remind me of the Babble Machine that my old pal Les Perelman invented. Les directed the undergraduate writing program at MIT. He is a critic of computer-scored writing assessments. To prove his point he invented a machine that “reads” essay responses, looking for keywords. It doesn’t matter that the essay makes no sense. If the essay contains the keywords the machine will score the essay well.

Last night’s second mayoral debate was like that in some ways . You could tell the phrases that both Chuy and Rahm were prepped to say.

But it was when they went off message that the real two candidates were exposed.

For good and bad.

You could see the two Rahm’s fighting with themselves. There was the modulated, passionless technocrat that repeated the same things over and over.

Yet every once in a while the real Rahm – the one that rubs us all the wrong way – came out. Nasty and whining.

“Let me finish. Let me finish,” Rahm cried when Chuy interrupted Rahm’s long-winded BS.

This was also true for Chuy.

He had his prepared talking points.

It was when he broke free and spoke like the community organizer he used to be that the real Chuy came out.

“You single-handedly closed it? People worked on it for 10 years before you were ever elected. You were still in Washington,” Chuy laughed when Rahm took credit for closing the coal plants in Chuy’s own neighborhood.

“You just showed up to cut the ribbons.”

It was Chuy come alive.

He has been given a shot in the arm by the neighborhood response to the tale-of-two-cities campaign.

He started the campaign as pinch-hitter for CTU President Karen Lewis.

Last night it changed.

Chuy was what my friend, retired city Streets and San guy Pasqual, calls El Toro.

The Bull.