Vice Presidential Debate Impressions, Entr'act

I decided to watch this debate in the company of several local Democrats at a restaurant in town, which may have been a bad choice from an information-gathering point of view. On the other hand, I gave away a couple of Kerry buttons and the entire waitressing staff (not being sexist, no guys on staff) suddenly wanted some of their own, which I scrambled to pick up from new people coming in, and they were wearing them with their uniforms as they served that night, so hey, maybe we got some good exposure from it. But reading the news, I see that the polls and at least some of the pundits disagree with my view of the outcome.

Let's start with the summary. In good conscience, I've got to call this one a draw. Much as I wanted my side's winning streak to continue, Cheney had a gravitas that I think Edwards struggled with, balanced by the facts being on Edwards' side. What a fascinating result: the dour Cheney won on style points, while the bright young Edwards won on facts. Postdebate online polls all seem to say Edwards won, usually by margins of 2 or 3 to 1, though the pundits I can find are mixed. (Even the ever-Republican FOX News channel's online poll has Edwards beating Cheney by 52% to 46%.) And since, frankly, I find the facts more important, in a poll that gave me no choice of "tie" I'd break for Senator Edwards.

Cheney uttered a few flat-out lies that made my ears perk; occasionally he'd contradict himself in the space of a few minutes. Asked about Rumsfeld's remark recently that the Secretary of Defense had seen no hard evidence of a link between Saddam and al-Qaeda, the Vice President replied:

Concern about Iraq specifically focused on the fact that Saddam Hussein had been, for years, listed on the state sponsor of terror, that they he had established relationships with Abu Nidal, who operated out of Baghdad; he paid $25,000 to the families of suicide bombers; and he had an established relationship with al-Qaeda.

Later, in his rebuttal to Senator Edwards on the next question(similar topic), he said:

The senator has got his facts wrong. I have not suggested there's a connection between Iraq and 9/11, but there's clearly an established Iraqi track record with terror.

Now, I don't exactly think I'm playing word games with anyone when I opine that saying Saddam had an established relationship with al-Qaeda is a suggestion that there is a connection between Iraq and 9/11.

Cheney cited the Republican party's oft-repeated figure that 10 million or more Afghanis have registered to vote. I'm sorry Edwards didn't pick up on the response to this, which is that the Afghani population eligible to register was estimated at around 9 million, so we're probably looking at massive voter fraud rather than wild success. Could be good success and mild voter fraud, though. But really, I think quoting the figure is inadvisable.

Vice President Cheney also claimed, in the process of denigrating Senator Edwards' record, that tonight was the first time the two had met -- which, even if true, I would have chalked up more as a sad commentary on the polarization of the nation in the last few years than as an indicator of poor attendance. It turns out, though, that the two have met before at least twice, according to a debunking I'm seeing on a news site (FOX news, believe it or not).

The good one-liners of the night were often from Senator Edwards' side: "It is critical that we be credible" could apply as a general life rule, but in this case talking about America's standing in the world it applies specifically to the shocking loss of trust around the world America has suffered in the last four years. Edwards' statement that "There are 60 countries that have members of al-Qaeda in them. How many of those counries are we going to invade?" is deeper than it may appear at first glance; it resonates with one of the U.S. military's own analyses of the Bush doctrine, which worries that troops and resources will be expended in adventures around the world seeking to defeat terrorism utterly, in a quest for absolute security. If we are never perfectly secure but can always be made more secure, there are often far better means of securing ourselves than with military force.

On style, Cheney earned some respect from me with non-replies, choosing silence when he seemed to have said all he needed to, or the question was provocative, or the line of conversation was turning personal. Knowing when to speak and when to be silent is a smart art to master. He easily pulled out anecdotes about foreign policy from 20 years ago (okay, *an* anecdote, but it was a good one), putting his long record of public service out there without directly trumpeting it. Edwards' travels during his term in the Senate, though the Sbarro's story was certainly dramatic, weren't quite so gripping.

Edwards seems to have consciously made an interesting choice to include several Cleveland references and statistics in his arguments tonight, presumably in the hope that audiences in Cleveland, where the debate was held, would be tuning in widely. Good call, I would say; if the VP debate doesn't affect the overall standings much, as they usually do not, a magnified effect could certainly be seen if Edwards successfully used tonight's debate to reach out to Ohioans. If Ohio goes for Kerry, Bush's race is virtually shot. Halliburton refs didn't make it into the debate until 9:26 as I heard it nd didn't dominate afterward, which I thought was all to the good, since it's a fairly low level issue for me. Malfeasance on the part of the company is obvious; Cheney's connections to any such thing are not, at least to me. The awarding of no-bid contracts and preferential treatment for the company while under investigation seem much more serious, to my mind.

I picked up a few new facts from the debate. I thought Senator Edwards had a strong rebuttal to the Bush campaign's charges that Senator Kerry voted against weapons systems:

John Kerry has voted for the biggest military appropriations bill in the country's history. John Kerry has voted for the biggest intelligence appropriations in the country's history. This vice president, when he was secretary of defense, cut over 80 weapons systems, including the very ones he's criticizing John Kerry for voting against. These are weapons systems, a big chunk of which, the vice president himself suggested we get rid of after the Cold War.

Of course, I had already expected that Kerry's votes fell in with the normal process of debating military expenditures in the Senate; however, senator Edwards fully exposing the hypocrisy of the Vice President in charging weakness for those positions when he himself had held those views, is something I must remember for future reference.

If it's hardheaded seriousness you look for in a Vice President, the challenger may not have sold it tonight. But if it's an ability to learn and face the facts that you look for in the President's understudy, I think you can call this one for for Senator Edwards.

Posted by William at October 5, 2004 10:49 PM

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