Amid the growls, howls, screeches and angry meows between our senile old tiger with the strong claw arm and the scrappy lil alley cat with the white, sharp, shiny lil teeth, something interesting happened. Dick Cheney lost. And I'll tell you why:
It's not that he didn't parry and slash as well as Edwards. In fact, there were many times when his points hit home and drew blood.
And it's not because his answers were sometimes boring, rambling, curt, off-point or contradictory. E.g., he started off the debate talking about Saddam's 10 year history with Al Qaida and then after facing a bruising fact attack from Edwards -- turned around within the 1st five minutes of the debate and told us that he'd never said that Saddam Hussein had anything to do with 9/11. Soooo, why did we attack Iraq again? The Today Show this am actually rolled a clip of Dick telling us in 2003 with great certainty that Saddam was responsible for 9/11. Ooops! (Click here for a Washington Post fact check on misleading statements from both candidates.)
And it wasn't the growing and palpable contempt that Gwen Ifill and Edwards had trouble masking and which Dick returned with gusto. Boy, you could cut the dark mushroom cloud forming over that round table with a knife!
And no, it wasn't Gwen's leading and favorable questions to John Edwards and slightly tougher questions and less friendly jabs at Dick.
No.
Dick lost because he got caught in a fiction. The impact is the same whether he was in error or whether he said it on purpose. John Edwards didn't call him on it and chose to make another point. But today, it's Dick who lost in the aftermath. Dick Cheney went after "Senator Gone's" record and ended his attack by saying that as President of the Senate, he'd never met Edwards until the night of this debate.
Whichever advisor told him to say that is probably fired this morning. Everyone is talking about how, in fact, that's just not true. Dick and John have met several times and once appeared on Meet the Press together. Whether Dick was just being rude and forgetful or whether he was being, ahem misleading, either way it proves the point that Kerry/Edwards have been trying to drive home about the Bush administration: that they are not being straight with the American people.
Word has it that Elizabeth Edwards actually got all up in Dick's face immediately after the debate and ran down to him all the times that they have met. D.C. is a small town. There are only 50 senators. How is it even possible that they wouldn't have met at some point? I mean, wouldn't they have met at the opening of the Senate at least? Or Ronald Reagan's funeral?? It just doesn't stand up when you throw a little light on it. Much like the ever-shifting rationale for why we invaded Iraq in the first place.
Dick's gaffe is the real take-away and run-away story here. It was a major mistake that is not going help the Bushies -- one that, if the Kerry campaign is smart, they will seize upon like an alley cat on a big juicy alley rat.
Pink Thunder should change her name to Pink Panther because of all the feline references in her stories. Panthers are also associated with radical causes, non Stokely?
Posted by: charlie dewitt | October 08, 2004 at 09:59 AM
Did you catch the part about Edwards missing 33 out of 36 Judiciary Committee meetings?
or Edwards missing 70% of the Intelligence meetings?
or that Edwards was not slated to win his Senate seat for a 2nd term?
or that his hometown newspaper calls him "Senator Gone"?
Have you ever forgotten a name or a face of someone you met 6 days, 6 weeks, or 6 months ago?
The Vice Pres. on average roughly meets about 30 to 40 NEW people a day. I can forgive him that Edwards didnt make an impression upon him over the years.
I could expect that the Dem party would scream foul over something trivial, but by most polls and informed views, Cheney won that debate, on substance, style and message.
Posted by: raekoo | October 19, 2004 at 02:55 AM