The ambulance chaser or the war profiteer?
The greatest potential problems with Cheney during the debate as I see them are:
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His flesh begins to smoke under the lights.
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His “heart” seizes up, and a gear flies out of his chest killing an audience member.
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His uncontrollable lust for human blood overcomes him and he feeds from the mediator.
Haha.
You call those problems? If I saw any of those, I’d be sorely tempted to switch my vote to our current undead masters.
Don’t forget that the Cheney-Lieberman debate was far better and more intelligent than any of the Bush-Gore debates. I recall several people here stating, after that debate, how much they wished Lieberman and Cheney could be P and VP due to the intelligence and maturity of their discussions and arguments.
Well, after 4 years of the Dick Cheney experience, I don’t think too many people here want him in office, but I am surprised that everyone thinks he’ll lose to Edwards in a debate.
Edwards is a talker and a smiler, Cheney is a grumbler and a scowler. Even if Edwards was handicapped by having to use Bush’s brain, he’d probably still win the debate.
Well, after 4 years of the Dick Cheney experience, I don’t think too many people here want him in office, but I am surprised that everyone thinks he’ll lose to Edwards in a debate.[/quote]
Cheney has a lot of baggage to overcome. He made some of the most outlandish claims about Iraq and WMD, even after the Kay Report proved these claims wrong. He has become the “bad guy” of the administration and a lot of the Republican base like him for that.
If the friendly uncle Dick from 2000 showed up, no one would believe it. But raving partisan Dick would look terrible in a debate. So he has to try to be true to both these personas.
The VP should be glad that Edwards can’t ask him any direct questions. If the moderator’s questions give the VP enough room to maneuver, he should be OK. But he still has to look strong.
All Edwards has to do is not stop the Kerry momentum from Thursday night. Cheney has do more.
Troy
But honestly, when has the VP debate ever mattered much? Bentsen destroyed Quayle, for all the difference it made…
Trotting ole’ scowly out there is going to once again remind America that they don’t want Cheney to ever be their President
In a close election it could matter. Dukakis could have had FDR as his running mate and still would have lost that election.
Edwards needs to show that he has the chops to be President, so this is a debate the Democrats want to win. Need to win, no. But with the last couple of weeks going pretty well for the Kerry campaign, they can’t let momentum stall.
Troy
It probably didn’t matter much in many other elections, but Cheney has been much more involved, both visibly and behind the scenes, than the usual VP.
Cheney will use the event to attack Kerry eight ways from Sunday. I don’t know how comfortable Edwards is defending Kerry or attacking Bush, so I am a little nervous about this debate. I’m not sure Edwards is totally on board with the Kerry foreign policy message delivered in the first debate, and he will need to be because he has to defend it.
Edwards is the lawyer that other lawyers used to run and go see when he was giving his closing arguments. I ain’t that worried about this one.
If you haven’t read Four Trials, Edward’s book, I’d recommend it. It’s almost terrifying how good he was.
If Clinton was the empathy guy, Edwards is the framing guy. He has this amazing ability to tailor everything he says to the exact background and interests of the juror listening.
As someone once noted of Edwards, you don’t make that much money as a trial lawyer and not know how to close a case.
That said, I wish people would quit with the slam dunk talk. It’s hubris, and we know how the gods feel about hubris. Al Gore was supposed to be a slam dunk against Shrub.
I’m not breathing easy until Nov. 3 (assuming we don’t repeat the last presidential election). It’s a knife fight guys. Don’t go slapping each other on the back quite yet.
After seeing John Edwards’ speech in Pennsylvania on Friday, if he does half as well during the debates as he does when he’s playing to an audience, it’s going to be an entertaining debate.
Most of the conservatives i know think Cheney will eat Edwards alive and whole. Something to do with a pneumatic jaw. One commented that he felt Cheney would have been a good Nazi. They feel, i gather, that this ball-busting asshole is the perfect vice president during a time of war, and represents this uncompromising decisiveness they want against terrorism.
I think that, while Cheney is a much more formidable opponent than Bush, Edwards is likely to pick his arguments well and tailor them for the national audience in a way that I don’t think Cheney can. Cheney has way too much baggage from the last four years – since he’s been the Administration’s go-to guy when they need a stalking horse to move the debate to the right.
Scary factoid about Edwards. Towards the end of his career, he essentially stopped taking depositions from witnesses. He apparently could read people (through body language, etc.) so well that he didn’t want to give his opponents the opportunity to have any insight whatsoever into what he was planning. As a lawyer friend of mine stated, “that’s just unnatural.”
Whether this will translate into a televised debate, I’m not sure. But I think Edwards has the mental acuity to run circles around Cheney – in part because running circles around other folks is how Edwards made his living for 20+ years.
Shit, we won’t see this one here :?
While John Edwards won the debate …
… Dick did not.