WASHINGTON, Oct. 5 (UPI) -- They both wore red ties tonight.
In the first presidential debate, Bush wore blue and Kerry red. Tonight, during the first and only vice presidential debate, Vice President Dick Cheney loved sitting, as if he were presiding over the debate allowing Gwen Ifill to pose questions. Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina was all hands and smiles, bounding out of his chair in trial-lawyer-like style the split second the debate ended. Cheney sat a good while.
The spin has already started about who won, and the prevailing line of the night will most likely be that Cheney won on foreign policy and Edwards on domestic. The truth of the matter is that it was not a memorable debate and won't make a difference in the minds of most Americans.
But still, some will care and did pay attention. Here are some of my observations.
In the entire debate, President Bush's name was mentioned only nine times. Four of these times were by Dick Cheney, and only once did he say "President Bush" -- the rest were "George Bush." Clearly, Cheney is comfortable with his president but wanted to convey respect for his boss without diminishing his own stature.
John Edwards only mentioned Bush's name twice. In contrast to Cheney referring to his running mate only a handful of times, John Edwards invoked Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry's name 34 times. And overall -- with moderator Gwen Ifill and Dick Cheney's utterances of "John Kerry" tossed in -- "Kerry" appeared 64 times during the 90-minute debate.
Before discussing any of the substance, what Cheney succeeded in doing, with John Edwards' help, was to make tonight's event a debate about John Kerry -- not George Bush. For the many Americans who can't quite figure out what John Kerry and John Edwards mean to them yet, pointing a finger at the Bush administration broadly for its policy failures and mistakes -- and perhaps at Bush directly for those who just don't like his style -- was just not pursued by Edwards.
If Edwards meant to make this night about juxtaposing John Kerry's and George Bush's world views, I didn't hear a macro description of what John Kerry would mean for the country -- but I did hear Cheney say that he and George Bush "believe that we ought to let the American people keep more of what they earn, and we ought to empower them to have more control over their own lives."
Edwards made a good case that the Kerry-Edwards team would be for giving the middle class tax relief and rolling back some of Bush's tax cuts for the rich. Edwards and Kerry are against gay marriages but also against constitutional amendments banning them. They are for tougher sanctions on Iran and for toughness in general with those behaving badly in the world. They are for alliances rather than going it alone, carrying the entire load on our own unilateralism. But despite my personal agreement with Edwards on most of his points, I missed the unifying theme of what Kerry is all about.
I heard from Cheney what Bush was all about -- and he mentioned the guy just four times. If scoring points, Cheney wins overall on just that score. Cheney got what he wanted: Bush was out of sight, out of mind.
Cheney came off as the slightly loveable grump -- someone who really does come off nasty and mean but who is also tender, willing to guard his daughter's pride and privacy. When prodded by John Edwards over the mismatch between the GOP's often-homophobic rhetoric and commitment to an anti-gay-marriage constitutional amendment, Cheney went silent and refused to respond. Personally, I found it frustrating not to have Cheney come out and express the distance between himself and the president and the religious right on gay issues. But he refused to parley. Smart move. He'll get points from the undecided voters for that -- and from the right wing for not undermining them and from PFLAG for standing by his daughter.
Cheney also made it look like it was John Edwards' fault that they had not met during Edwards' entire time in the Senate. Doesn't Cheney have the big home over at the Naval Observatory with a brand new bunker beneath it? He could have invited Edwards to show him the nifty house additions. Bush and Cheney control the invitation list for all those holiday parties and state dinners. If meeting Edwards was on Cheney's mind, the power of the invite lay on Cheney's side -- but Edwards did nothing to capitalize on this other strangely memorable moment in the debate.
Cheney scored as well by noting both Edwards' and Kerry's absences from Senate committee meetings and floor votes. But what about Bush's constant vacationing? Bush vacationed for nearly an entire month after he was directly warned about Osama bin Laden's intent to attack within the United States. Edwards missed another opportunity to make the night about contrasting Bush's failures with Kerry's potential.
Edwards scored some blows starting with Paul Bremer's just-revealed criticisms of the administration for not sending enough troops to Iraq. But too many of John Edwards' lines were parroted from Kerry's comments in the first presidential debate. Cheney as well resorted to Bush's favored "wrong war, wrong place, wrong time" line that the president used six times in his debate -- and Cheney just four.
But Cheney created newly fabricated shares of spending and war casualties that Edwards seemed surprised by. And even though Edwards had the actual numbers right and insisted that Cheney was fabricating falsehoods, he lacked the combination of tenaciousness and facility with the facts of this war that ultimately prevented him from undermining Cheney's account.
When it got to healthcare and protecting the rights of victims against the negligence of some truly nefarious corporations, John Edwards rode herd over Cheney, who clearly has not been thinking beyond the domestic-policy talking points that his speech-preparation staff provided. Edwards displayed the same impressive dexterity Kerry showed in his comments about North Korea specifically and foreign policy generally when he spoke about the "bright light of America" flickering as America's middle class is undermined by the Bush administration's tilt towards the rich.
Edwards did have one of the most effective appeals to the public of the night: "I have grown up in the bright light of America, but that light is flickering today. Now, I know that the vice president and the president don't see it. But you do. You see it when your incomes are going down and the cost of everything -- college tuition, healthcare -- is going through the roof. You see it when you sit at your table each night and there's an empty chair because a loved one is serving in Iraq or Afghanistan." Edwards hit the ball out of the park on that.
On bipartisanship, Cheney was entirely unconvincing and unenthusiastic about a strategy to more successfully reach across the aisle. His curmudgeonish style and righteousness about the war, his certainty of vision and direction, are not warm and inviting and are not really interested in compromise. He doesn't really care about those politicians on the other side of the divide. The real answer as to why bipartisanship is dead today and not when he was in the House is that he was not in charge back then. Congressional leaders were determined to work with each other on a far bigger part of the national-policy portfolio than they are today.
Their summations deserve comment. Cheney appealed to those who fear the array of threats that might still be directed at America. "Now we find ourselves in the midst of a conflict unlike any we've ever known, faced with a possibility that terrorists could smuggle a deadly biological agent or a nuclear weapon into the middle of one of our own cities," he said. Cheney's is a high fear/low trust world in which strong punitive leadership is required. His is the administration with a snarl, committed to squashing all that stand in America's way -- survival being the ever-present challenge requiring justifiable and ongoing sacrifices by U.S. citizens.
John Edwards' concluding vision was one of trust and hope in the future. He was nearly saying it will all be better if you elect us. "We believe in a strong middle class in this country. That's why we have a plan to create jobs, getting rid of tax cuts for companies outsourcing your jobs, give tax cuts to companies that will keep jobs here in America. It's why we have a healthcare plan. It's why we have a plan to keep you safe and to fix this mess in Iraq," he said. Edwards was selling, pretty convincingly, the notion that it is the president's responsibility to get America's families back into manageable shape, get things in order and under control, where Americans can trust each other and not live in fear -- a high trust/low fear world at home and abroad.
It's clear to me that two alternative visions were presented tonight.
Candidly though, if this night was meant to be about George W. Bush's failures or successes, about whether we liked the Cowboy in the White House or not, Bush's presence was missing, and that is probably what the Bush-Cheney team wanted to accomplish.
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(Steven Clemons is publisher of TheWashingtonNote.com and is executive vice president of the New America Foundation in Washington.)
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(United Press International's "Outside View" commentaries are written by outside contributors who specialize in a variety of issues. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of United Press International. In the interests of creating an open forum, original submissions are invited.)
