RALEIGH – Vice-presidential debates aren’t supposed to matter much. The Tuesday debate between Dick Cheney and John Edwards wasn’t surprising in this regard. There were no big gaffes, no events that could by themselves sock one or the other ticket. But to the extent that this debate helped to set the stage for the next few days of to-and-fro on national security, I would have to rate it as a win for the Republicans.
Just as John Kerry did in the first presidential debate last week, John Edwards tried to straighten out the messy position the Democratic ticket has taken on the war in terror and the campaign in Iraq. And just like Kerry, Edwards failed to do so. The position remains incoherent and hard to communicate. Indeed, Cheney pointed this out with one line I thought was particularly effective: you can’t say Iraq is the wrong place at the wrong time – and, by the way, please send troops.
Edwards did a bit better by questioning whether the administration had done enough to plan for the campaign and to deploy enough troops. His invitation to the American public that it view Iraq from the vantage point of viewers of nightly newscasts of bombings and beheadings, not as listeners to Cheney’s version of the war, was a clever tactic. It was wrong on the merits, though, as you don’t get an accurate picture of how traffic is flowing in your city by looking at pictures of the accident that happened that day across town; the press coverage is necessarily misleading in depicting Iraq as a whole.
Although Edwards is a skilled speaker and litigator, my sense during the first half of the debate, on foreign affairs, was that he was going after the wrong defendant. He kept criticizing Cheney, and “the administration,” but virtually never mentioned the name “George W. Bush.” He’s the incumbent president! He’s the guy the Democrats have to convince voters to fire. Defending Kerry was fine, but Edwards should have been trying directly to question Bush’s leadership. The voters still trust him over Kerry by a large margin on security matters. Those 40 minutes or so, far more important than the second half on domestic issues, were mostly about John Kerry. That was a mistake.
Substantively, Edwards improved during the domestic phase of the debate where he is stronger and more passionate. I’m not crazy about many, possibly any, of his ideas here, mind you, but they were easier to explain. Cheney actually handled the issue of gay marriage far better and more gracefully, however, which surprised me.
Stylistically, Cheney looked authoritative and commanding, but also a little tired. Edwards started out too strong, too much like a puppy dog, and then seem to take a cat nap during the middle before perking up and finishing the last homestretch at a gallop (welcome to Mixed Animal Metaphor Playhouse).
Two lines I’ll remember from this debate: 1) Cheney lecturing Edwards that if he couldn’t stand up against the political momentum of Howard Dean (explaining Edwards moving from pro-war to anti-war) how can he stand up to al Qaeda?; and 2) Edwards saying he and Kerry had been “absolutely consistent” on Iraq all along. But senator, you said before the coalition invasion that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was an “imminent threat” to the U.S.
Thus the problem: the messenger is a good talker but the message was and is unintelligible.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.