On the Vice Presidential Debate

First, Mr. Cheney isn’t as sunny as Shrek. A friend wandered in after about half an hour, having listened to the debate in the car, took one look, and fell into a funk. “He was winning on the radio,” he lamented. The funny and tolerant Cheney of 2000 mostly didn’t show up;

(2) Andrew Sullivan thinks this tired-old-man factor translated into a big win for Mr. Edwards; I’m with the CW in thinking the debate a draw. For one thing, Mr. Cheney’s stand-up-to-Howard-Dean line was justly damaging. Plus, Mr. Edwards at times looked like a yapping ankle-biter, albeit a well-briefed one. At other times he seemed condescending – e.g., “They want to know that their president and their vice president will keep them safe.” I got the heebie jeebies when he smarmily praised Mr. Cheney for having a gay daughter. Why was that Mr. Edwards’s business if he didn’t have the guts to then accuse Cheney of abandoning his own child?

(3) Mr. Edwards’ great failure: To effectively make the case that Mr. Bush’s pursuit of the global war on terror, as opposed to the specific war in Iraq, is a dangerous disaster-in-the-making – not because we haven’t caught Osama bin Laden, but because we are creating the “clash of civilizations” where there doesn’t have to be one. Instead Mr. Edwards seemed to be overreacting to the day’s headlines about car bombings in Baghdad, which left the impression that it really would be easy to drive him from Iraq. As a result, even Mr. Edwards’s Iraq-specific attack was ineffective.

(4) Mr. Cheney’s missed opportunities: There were a lot of them:

(a) Mr. Edwards got peeved when Cheney talked about education in an answer about the economy. How about: “Mr. Edwards, in the 21st century, education is essential to the economy, to getting good jobs that pay well. Don’t you know that?” Human capital. Take it away, Bill Clinton. Mr. Edwards’s own closing statement talked about his father educating himself in order to make more money.

(b) Mr. Cheney failed to hammer home the ongoing embarrassment of now-hawkish Mr. Kerry’s 1991 vote against the Gulf War. It would have been a point worth pausing for: Mr. Kerry wouldn’t take on Saddam even when he’d invaded a sovereign neighboring nation;

(c) If Mr. Kerry, according to Mr. Edwards, would have waited for the inspections to work, and if as Mr. Edwards himself argued the inspections would have showed that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction, then there would have been no invasion and Saddam would still be in power, working to lift sanctions, etc. Right? Amazingly, Mr. Cheney didn’t point this out….

(5) Mr. Edwards’s weakest moment: He seemed to want experienced-world-leader points just because he was in Israel a few hours before a suicide bomb attack, plus he knew the brand name of the restaurant that was attacked; 6) Never mind Paul Bremer – Mr. Cheney still didn’t have an answer on Tora Bora. How about: “We tried to work with local forces instead of going it alone like an occupying power. We didn’t know that mountainous border area well. They did. In retrospect, it was a mistake. We make mistakes all the time; it always happens in a war. We try to learn from them.” I suspect Mr. Cheney would have won hands down if he’d have candidly admitted to some screw-ups. That’s how real CEOs talk. It’s okay to be a grouch if you’re a straight-talking grouch…. More Trump, less Grump….

Biggest Softball Question That Only Confirmed Suspicions of PBS Bias: Gwen Ifill’s Question to Edwards Flip-flopping has become a recurring theme in this campaign, you may have noticed. Senator Kerry changed his mind about whether to vote to authorize the president to go to war. President Bush changed his mind about whether a homeland security department was a good idea or a 9/11 Commission was a good idea. What’s wrong with a little flip-flop every now and then? Aren’t those charges against you bogus? I hear you have some bullet points you’d like to recite.” Okay, she didn’t say that last part. She didn’t need to.

More Debate Folo

Alert reader S.H. clues me in on the obvious purpose of Senator Edwards’s creepy “congratulations on your gay daughter” ploy: it was “a very thinly disguised way of letting Reagan Democrats and other conservative-leaning members of the electorate know that Vice President Cheney has a lesbian daughter.” In other words, a cynical, premeditated appeal to prejudice. You can say it’s an appeal to prejudice that’s justly deserved, because it turns the Republicans’ bigotry against them. But that assumes opposition to gay marriage is now the same thing as general prejudice against gays. Mr. Edwards was playing to the latter, uglier sentiment. It’s still creepy….Just his cold confidence that he could pull the trick off without seeming evil – indeed, while pretending to be friendly – is creepy….