For those who missed the vice-presidential debate here’s a handy summary:
Edwards:
- Bush lied.
- Halliburton.
- Stump speech.
Cheney:
- They’re inconsistent.
- Senator Gone.
- I have nothing more to say.
My take: Cheney by a nose.
Cheney did what he had to do: he did not look like an ogre, he stanched the bleeding from the last debate, he restated campaign themes effectively, and he kept Kerry’s “global test” gaffe in the air. Edwards is a personable lightweight. He did not give a compelling explanation of the “global test” bit. He hammered Cheney on Halliburton (which I don’t think is that much of a winning issue unless you’re a strongly partisan Democrat) and got back to his stump speech as quickly and often as he could.
This was actually a pretty boring debate. I didn’t see any point in the debate as in the discussion of North Korea in the presidential debate at which there was actual dialogue about the issues. Cheney had the best of the first, foreign policy part of the debate. Edwards had the best of the second part which focused on domestic issues. Was anybody tuned in to the second part?
Gwen Ifills did a very decent job on the questioning and with several questions was cleverly trying to nudge the candidates off of their talking points. For example, in one question she instructed Mr. Edwards to give his answer without mentioning his running mate. He was unable to do so. He was sticking to his programming.
In my view the sole interesting thing about the debate was a possible hint of the emerging strategy of the Bush campaign. I had been puzzled in the presidential debate by Mr. Bush’s repetition of the “hard work” point. It was mentioned too often to be accidental but he didn’t really tie it into anything. Cheney did. His analysis of Mssrs. Kerry and Edwards’s unremarkable Senate careers suggests that the Bush campaign is making the case that Kerry/Edwards is all show and no go, not willing or able to do the hard work of governing. It will be interesting to see if they can make this stick. Frankly, I’m skeptical.
UPDATE: In Joe Gandelman’s excellent survey of reactions to last night’s debate he quotes blogger Beth Young’s observations:
Interestingly, on radio, it seemed clear that Dick Cheney was walking all over John Edwards. Cheney sounded decisive; Edwards sounded breathless, nervous, rushed; Edwards fumbled over his words. I felt that Cheney was misstating the facts, but I don’t think the facts really matter to the average viewer wondering who “won” the debate. Most people who feel they know the facts have already chosen a side. Any listeners who felt they didn’t know the facts, I believed, would prefer Cheney, just because he sounded more confident. Cheney rattled off numbers and percentages and Edwards was left to respond with, “Well, that’s not true and we have a plan.”
But on television, that impression was reversed. Cheney looked crabby and seemed to mutter. Edwards had more confident gestures and a more conversational style. When Edwards stumbled over his words, or when he “broke the rule” about mentioning Kerry, his nonverbal behavior made it clear that he wasn’t rattled. Instead, he seemed less scripted, and more involved in talking . . . and listening (rather than simply rushing out with his preprepared attacks).
IBeth’s observations that Joe reports may account for some of the differences in the reaction to the debate. It’s a pretty well-documented phenomenon that a lot of people react no differently to debates with the sound off and the sound on. But people do react differently to sound-only (radio).
So differences in reaction to the debate may not be merely a barometer of one’s political position. It may also be a measurement of how one reacts to the paralinguistic (facial expression, body language, posture, etc.) features of the debate.
UPDATE: Linked to Beltway Traffic Jam.
