Balkinization  

Wednesday, October 06, 2004

The Vice Presidential Debate

JB

The first half hour or so was very spirited. After that, it lost energy. Gwen Ifill's questions near the end were unimaginative and did little to advance the debate. About 50 minutes into the debate I was hoping they would wrap it up early. Instead, they ran several minutes late.

This morning the New York Times ran a story whose opening sentences suggested that both candidates stretched or distorted the truth. But when you read the story, it appears that most of the examples involved Cheney, and only a few involved Edwards. Indeed, at some points in the debate Cheney was pretty shameless in his attempts to mislead, for example in attacking Kerry for opposing defense programs Cheney himself had also opposed, and in his insistence that he had never suggested that Saddam was connected to 9/11. (He even tried to insist that he had never met Edwards to insinuate that Edwards was irresponsible as a senator. This line of attack seemed very much a prepared line, and so I do not think we can attribute it to a momentary lapse of memory).

Cheney must have known that he would be fact checked afterwards, but apparently he thought that most listeners would tune out and not pay attention to what was reported later on in the print media. When Edwards was asked why he was qualified to be Vice-President, I think he should have simply said, "I will tell the truth. Decades of service in Washington have apparently made my opponent so hardbitten and cynical that he has no compunction about misleading the public even when the facts are easy to check."


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