VP debate: Cheney vs. Edwards

No big surprises in Tuesday debate between John Edwards and Dick Cheney.  The Dark Lord of Halliburton delivered his scripted message - terror, 9/11, Iraq, terrorism, Saddam, 9/11 - with his usual dour undertaker's charm.

Edwards hammered Cheney and Bush hard on the credibility issue, using the Iraq War again and again as an example.  He nailed him on Halliburton, and emphasized that Saddam had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.  Unlike Joe Lieberman in 2000, he didn't allow Cheney to get away with making pronoucements in a moderate tone to conceal his bone-deep conservatism and disastrous foreign policy views.

Transcript: Vice Presidential Debate Washington Post, accessed 10/04/04:

Edwards' best moment would have made William Jennings Bryan proud:

Let me say first, on an issue that the vice president said in his last answer before we got to this question, talking about tax policy, the country needs to know that under what they have put in place and want to put in place, a millionaire sitting by their swimming pool, collecting their statements to see how much money they're making, make their money from dividends, pays a lower tax rate than the men and women who are receiving paychecks for serving on the ground in Iraq.

Yes, that was a real Jacksonian moment for Edwards.

I want to give the Dark Lord credit for a couple of things.  Much of the time he does come across as knowledgeable, serious and substantive.  At times, like when he was speaking about his lesbian daughter or when he was reminiscing about the good ole days of more bipartisanship, he shows a more human side that people can relate to.  This is a large part of how he has so often managed to come across as more moderate than he is.  And it's not a matter of superficial style; he clearly comes across as much better informed and more coherent in his argumentation than the head of his ticket.

But Edwards also did what he needed to do to largely puncture that.  He went after the lies over the Iraq War.  He challenged him on misrepresenting Kerry's comment about a "global test."  (The Republicans have taken to calling that the Kerry Doctrine, saying that it means he wants to get other country's permission before the US defends itself.)  It's probably good that Edwards didn't comma-dance over the meaning of "global" in that context.  He emphasized again Kerry's position on being honest with the American people about the cause of war, as well as presenting a credible case to the world when we go to war.  (If you really need to see the comma-dancing, Juan Cole indulged in it on 10/03/04.)

Edwards also reminded the viewers that on the Iraq War, four more years of Bush and Cheney mean "more of the same." He did a good job of parrying Cheney's jabs about "tort reform," though that is an issue that will always have a certain resonance among the Chamber of Commerce crowd.

And Edwards brought up Cheney's Halliburton connections to very good effect.  Halliburton's sweetheart deals on its war-profiteering contracts are a scandal that stinks to high heaven, and the Democrats would be derelict in their duty if they didn't make a big deal about it.  Another Jacksonian moment or two for Edwards.  And I was surprised a couple of times when Cheney was unable to use his full 30-second rebuttal period, although one of those times was on the gay marriage issue, so he may have figured the less he said on that, the better.

Edwards' most effective moments against Dark Lord Cheney were the several times he challenged his misstatements of reality.  My own favorite example was when he challenged the administration's completely phony, Pollyanna pretense about Afghanistan:

Here's what's actually happened in Afghanistan, regardless of this rosy scenario that they paint on Afghanistan, just like they do with Iraq. What's actually happened is they're now providing 75 percent of the world's opium.

Not only are they providing 75 percent of the world's opium, large-cut parts of the country are under the control of drug lords and warlords. Big parts of the country are still insecure.

And the reality is the part of Afghanistan, eastern Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden is, is one of the hardest places to control and the most insecure, Gwen.

You had to have been playing close attention to see much news about Afghanistan the last couple of years.  But Edwards described the situation correctly.  The projected presidential election in Afghanistan in a few days is a bad joke.

Cheney was probably at his strongest when trying to raise doubts about Kerry's secret plan for the Iraq War.  The truth that none of the candidates feel they can say out loud is that Iraq is now such a mess that there are only choices among bad outcomes for the US left now.

I notice that Cheney came out swinging with the Republican talking points I mentioned in an earlier post of using the Iraq=9/11=terrorism meme.  In his first statement, the Dark Lord said (my emphasis):

It's important to look at all of our developments in Iraq within the broader context of the global war on terror. And, after 9/11, it became clear that we had to do several things to have a successful strategy to win the global war on terror, specifically that we had to go after the terrorists where ever we might find them, that we also had to go after state sponsors of terror, those who might provide sanctuary or safe harbor for terror.

CHENEY: And we also then finally had to stand up democracies in their stead afterwards, because that was the only way to guarantee that these states would not again become safe harbors for terror or for the development of deadly weapons.

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.

Specifically, look at George Tenet, the CIA director's testimony before the Committee on Foreign Relations two years ago when he talked about a 10-year relationship.

The effort that we've mounted with respect to Iraq focused specifically on the possibility that this was the most likely nexus between the terrorists and weapons of mass destruction.

The biggest threat we faced today is the possibility of terrorists smuggling a nuclear weapon or a biological agent into one of our own cities and threatening the lives of hundreds of thousands of Americans.

What we did in Iraq was exactly the right thing to do. If I had it to recommend all over again, I would recommend exactly the same course of action. The world is far safer today because Saddam Hussein is in jail, his government is no longer in power. And we did exactly the right thing.

But Tuesday's debate also left me more convinced that the "flip-flop/mixed messages" charge is a weak one for Bush to use against Kerry.  Kerry obviously doesn't have a problem stating his position, and is not shy about defending his past positions, and is able to do so clearly.  The underlying theme of the flip-flop charge is, "This other guy is a stranger, you can't trust him, we don't know what he's about." Especially with a potent issue like the Iraq War for Kerry to exploit, that's a hard point to make stick.

The one thing that struck me strongly during this debate was that the candidates may well be behind the public sentiment on gay marriage.  The marriages in San Francisco and Massachusetts earlier this year put that issue into a whole different light for people who hadn't necessarily seriously considered such a thing before.

I don't mean to be naive about it; it's obviously an issue that drives some people nuts.  And it may have struck an especially sympathetic chord with me, because my marriage in 1993 took place in the same San Francisco City Hall where those were held.  So I was probably more inclined than most to feel sympathetic about it.  But I suspect that if Kerry and Edwards had straight-forwardly said they have no objections to gay marriage, it at least would not have hurt them.  But that wouldn't mean a difference in their current positions on federal legislation.  They are in favor of leaving the matter to individual states.

And it's awfully easy to think of some other question that the interviewer could have asked.  But couldn't Gwen Ifill have managed to work in one question about the torture scandal at Abu Ghuraib?