The world will little note, nor long remember.
This promises to have as much effect on the election's outcome as does the typical veep debate. No knockout blows were landed. Partisans for each candidate will take comfort.
That's not to say it was without moment. Cheney tried to give the impression that he couldn't be rattled. Edwards was more passionate. When Cheney was groping for words, he covered by complaining about time limits and wondering where to start. Edwards's occasional struggles gave the impression that he was engaged and editing his responses in realtime, rather than deciding which rehearsed remark would best fit.
Cheney echoed his boss's sophist attacks on Kerry's awareness of complexity. His silence on gay rights was deafening.
One had the impression that he was doing the best he could with bad material.
For many who'd never heard him speak before, this was Edward's debate to lose, and he didn't lose.
With that over, we can wait for the final debate that actually matters.
posted by Undersecretary to the Deputy Commissariat at 7:43 PM
3 Comments:
I have mixed feelings about this debate. I think that Edwards "won" (insofar as anybody wins these things), but won dirty; i.e. not answering the questions, pushing hot buttons, using cheap rhetorical devices. Sleazy, but effective. I'm glad Edwards is was chosen as veep, but even more glad that he didn't get the nomination.
Cheney did a much better job defending the adminiration's policies than his "boss" did (which is saying next to nothing, come to think of it). He often sounded very intelligent and well informed, "wonkish" even, when he wasn't telling bald-faced lies, which was about 20% of the time. But as the night wore on, and Edwards wore on his nerves, he slowly degenerated into Vice President Grumpus. And on domestic policy, other than defending tax cuts for the rich, he appears to not give a flying fuck about the lot of them. Then, in his closing statement, he delivered his standard stump speech: "Vote for me if you want to live."
Just read on Talking Points Memo: Cheney urged viewers to got to "factcheck.com" to see refutation of claims of Haliburton mis-doings. He meant "factcheck.org". "Factcheck.com" redirects to "www.georgesoros.com".
HAR!!!
I had low expectations for the first presidential debate, therefore I was pleased by it. (I had feared Kerry would be ponderous, wordy, intellectual, and bloodless. He wasn't.) For the veeps, I had higher hopes that Edwards would blast Mr. Burns out of the water, showing his mean-spiritedness and disingenousness. I think that didn't happen. Cheney was much better than I expected and Edwards less aggressive than I had hoped. It seems to me that VPs have less need to pull punches that the P-man; remember how effective Gore was, debating as VP. Still, as the Undersecretary notes, Cheney did a good job with bad material and Edwards surely didn't lose.
On a not unrelated note, (I love those tasty backward negative formations) the Laird and I have agreed to travel to Portland to volunteer for the Kerry/Edwards campaign just before the election. Send me your best wishes as I try to render "Bush is profoundly uncomfortable with the idea of democracy and doesn't really like us very much" into colloquial Spanish.
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