It is bizarre and strange to me that there is even a partial consensus among the TV talking heads that this debate was a draw. But then I’m terrible at judging what the media spin will be.
It seemed painfully clear to me that Cheney was tired and repetitious, Edwards nimble and engaged. When Cheney lurched at Edwards with cold, sharp jabs, Edwards parried with warmth and then gracefully landed his own blows. (Yes, it did seem like a boxing match at times — that’s good, there should be some real mixing-it-up in a debate.)
Here on the Web the commentary feels closer to reality. Andrew Sullivan says Cheney was “road-kill”: ” There was a tone of exasperation in much of Cheney’s wooden and often technical responses to political and moral questions…. He went down snarling. His personal attacks on Edwards were so brutal and so personal and so direct that I cannot believe that anyone but die-hard partisans would have warmed to them. Edwards’ criticisms, on the other hand, were tough but relatively indirect — he was always and constantly directing the answers to his own policies. Edwards, whom I’d thought would come of as a neophyte, was able to give answers that were clear and methodical.
Here’s Josh Marshall: “I thought that about a third of the way through the debate Edwards started to get under Cheney’s skin. The VP seemed mad. And not in a flattering way. The basic reason, I think, was the same as in President Bush’s case. He didn’t like hearing the fusillade of criticism about Iraq and the war on terror. There were no grimaces and rolling eyes like in the president’s case. But something about him turned sour and snide. And, again, not in a way that helped him land any punches on Edwards or Kerry.”
And over in Salon’s War Room, we’re fact-checking Cheney’s false statements about never having met Kerry before the debate and about Zarqawi and otherwise mopping up some of the evening’s loose ends.
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