TomPaine.com asked the editors of three liberal publications for their rapid responses to the vice-presidential debates. John Edwards warmed our hearts by deftly denouncing the Bush administration’s record on education and the economy. And he hammered the idea that Iraq is a mess because of the administration's incompetence. But who won?
Ruth Conniff
Thomas F. Schaller
Nicholas Confessore
Ruth Conniff, Editor, The Progressive
Edwards was brilliant. From the first moments of the debate, he knocked Cheney back on his heels ("You're still not being straight with the American people"). He mentioned Halliburton, a company—he reminded us—that did business with sworn enemies of the United States and paid millions in fines before receiving its no-bid contracts in Iraq. Smiling, energetic and aggressive, Edwards walked all over the mumbling, monotonous veep. He even forced Cheney to say "I have not suggested there is a connection between Iraq and 9/11"—a connection he has worked hard to insinuate. To Cheney's non-sequitur attack on his attendance record in the Senate, Edwards landed his greatest blow. "I'm surprised my opponent wants to talk about records," he said, listing Cheney's extreme right-wing votes on Head Start, Meals on Wheels, and, the capper, against freeing Nelson Mandela. To which Cheney merely replied, "I think the record speaks for itself."
Edwards illuminated simply and clearly how badly things are going in Iraq, and how poorly Bush and Cheney have managed the economy. But the dynamic of the debate changed toward the end. Maybe it was when Cheney suddenly decided to appear more cordial and thanked Edwards for his kind words about his gay daughter. Or when Cheney mentioned a tax loophole Edwards once used. That seemed to rattle him. In the last fifteen minutes Edwards looked tired and missed opportunities. But overall, his stellar performance in the first half and Cheney's defensiveness gave the impression of an administration on the run. In closing, Cheney dwelt on voters' "responsibility" vis a vis the terrorist threat (vote Republican or die). Edwards talked about hope and rekindling the flickering light of middle-class opportunity. Edwards was the star of the hour.
Thomas F. Schaller, Ph.D., Executive Editor,The Gadflyer
The simplified caricatures spun so heavily in advance about both Vice President Dick Cheney and Senator John Edwards turned out to be only marginally relevant. Yes, Halliburton’s dealings with Iran and Libya, and Edwards’ history as a trial lawyer were discussed.
But the real points were scored in other areas: by Cheney when he recalculated the fatality counts to include Iraqi soldiers (which worked despite being misleading), and his reminder that Kerry voted against the first Iraq war but for the second; by Edwards when he continued to remind Americans that Osama bin Laden—not Saddam Hussein orchestrated the September 11 attacks, and with his impassioned comments about child poverty rates and job losses.
Cheney’s best line pertained to Kerry’s war talk during the primaries when he asked, “if he can’t stand up to Howard Dean, how will he stand up to the terrorists?” His best moment was refusing to use his follow-up time on the question about his position on gay marriage, after thanking Edwards for the senator’s kind words about the vice president’s daughter. Edwards’ best line was when he said—in relation to foreign policy—that “for America to lead it is critical that we be credible” so the world will “trust what we say.” His best moment was the analogy he made between holding elections in Iraq and Cleveland, and the insufficiency of just 35 people to supervise either.
As for the bigger picture, by building upon the case Kerry made in Miami about the disconnect between the administration’s performance and promises, Edwards kept the focus where the Democrats want it—namely, on a retrospective assessment of the Bush-Cheney record. Had Edwards been as strong during the second half of the debate as he was initially, he would have won outright. With his southerly drawl, he made sure the jury is still out as to whether Bush-Cheney deserve a second term. And that shifts the pressure for this Friday in St. Louis back where it squarely belongs: on Bush’s shoulders.
So tonight was at the least a draw, if not a slight win for Edwards.
P.S.: Watch for the post-debate spin fight to revolve around whether Cheney met Edwards before tonight. Cheney’s dig was ruthless and mean—and he may pay for it when the facts come out.
Nicholas Confessore, Editor, The Washington Monthly
Until now, sticking to your talking points no matter what the question or subject at hand was a campaign tactic most closely identified with George W. Bush. Indeed, consistency and simplicity of message has been perhaps Bush's greatest strength as a politician, second only, perhaps, to the patrician president's surprising knack for the common touch. It's been maddening for Democrats to watch Bush deflect nearly any criticism, nearly any factual discrepancy, by simply ignoring what's been asked and bring the conversation back to what he feels like talking about. At times it's seemed as though the great lesson of Bush's presidency is that discipline and message control trump good policy and positive results.
Now Republicans must know how Democrats feel. Tonight, John Edwards showed he could be as methodical and programmed as the president. As relentlessly on message. Moderator Gwen Ifill seemed almost irrelevant to the debate between Edwards and Dick Cheney. Several times, Edwards simply ignored the specific question she had asked and steered briskly, even abruptly, to his own areas of attack. When he didn't feel like he had enough time on a topic, he'd return to it during the next period. All in all, the key Kerry-Edwards talking points—that the president's re-election means "more of the same," that Bush is not being straight with the American people, that the U.S. is bearing most of the cost of a failed policy in Iraq—made multiple appearances through the 90-minute exchange. Cheney actually answered the questions. And that was probably a mistake.
To the pundits and reporters, a performance like Edwards' seems robotic. But for voters, most of whom haven't been listening to the same sound bites day after day for months, there's a sense in which saying less means communicating more. Dick Cheney scored some nice hits on the senator, but no knockout blows, and he was far less consistent than the president has been in painting the other team as a bunch of flip-flopping weaklings. (His off-point, just-bear-with-me anecdote about El Salvador 's civil war reminded me of nothing so much as one of Kerry's painful campaign-trail improvisations.) You can bet that, coming out of this debate, the voters who watched know exactly what Kerry and Edwards think of the Bush administration. But whether or not the challengers win depends on how many voters actually agree with them.
