Presumably safe territory is turning into some of the trickiest ground for the candidates to make a stand on in this year's presidential contest. Following quickly on the heels of John Kerry's decisive defeat of George W. Bush in their debate on foreign-policy and national-security issues, where Bush was expected to be at his strongest, vice-presidential challenger John Edwards last night rapidly placed Vice President Dick Cheney on the defensive on the administration's conduct of the war in Iraq and repeated attempts to link it to al-Qaeda. But then Edwards strangely flagged when the debate belatedly turned to domestic issues, failing, for example, to turn Cheney's admission about African-American women with AIDS that he was “not aware that it was -- that they're in epidemic there,” into an argument that the administration doesn't know what's going on in this country any better than it does in Iraq.
This suggests that the Rovian strategy of attacking your opponent on his own turf has become so ingrained in both campaigns that presumed natural advantage is no longer enough for the candidates to rely upon in a debate situation. Clearly, overcompensating for perceived weaknesses works, but under-preparing to explain or attack on strong suits can lead, unsurprisingly, to underperformance.
Overall, the vice-presidential candidates matched each other blow for blow in their Cleveland debate, and early network polls showed voters with mixed opinions of the sharply worded debate. ABC News' poll found 43 percent of voters giving the win to Cheney and 35 percent to Edwards (a fact the Bush-Cheney campaign was quick to point out). CBS News, meanwhile, found its uncommitted voters favoring Edwards by 41 to 29 percent.
Stylistically, Edwards won, hands down -- partly because he kept his hands down and his eyes and head up. Cheney often presented his face to the camera as 50 to 75 percent forehead, slumping deeply into his seat and covering his chin with his hands while gazing directly at the table, as if it held some deep secrets he wished to decipher. At times, he appeared as if he might cave in on himself, burying his microphone with folds of cloth; by the end of the debate I was reduced to lip-reading to figure out what he was saying because his natural mumble had faded into a muffled stream of indistinguishable sounds. (Though when I could make out the statements, they often sounded like, “The key is to address some basic fundamental issues that the president's already dealing with,” which didn't strike me as any clearer.)
Other times, Cheney appeared angry or, when attacking Edwards and Kerry in unflinching terms, downright rude. There are things that can be said on the stump and in print that sound quite different when the subject of the sentence is sitting only a few feet away. CBS found female voters somewhat turned off by Cheney's attacks, and I suspect that my impression in both debates that the incumbents were being rude as opposed to tough is itself a bit of a gendered assessment. Cheney's hall-monitor act with Edwards, attacking his Senate attendance record and claiming they hadn't met until that evening, quickly backfired when Kerry campaign researchers dug up this picture of the two men standing side by side at a 2001 prayer breakfast, turning the attack into one that will only bolster the Kerry line that the administration habitually lies. The image has the exact mix of triviality and visual punch likely to make it a lasting metaphor for the administration's prevarications. Because if they'll lie about something this trivial, what won't they lie about?
Every time Edwards spoke the sound quality improved, leaving an overall impression of brightness and clarity that was vastly assisted by his more youthful appearance, simple rhetorical questions, and eager manner. Edwards was much more memorable in his phrasing and use of the anecdotes and examples than Cheney, although I suspect viewers will recall as much about the two-dollar screw that could have saved Valerie Lakey from disembowelment as they will about the first war costing $5 billion compared to the current war's $200-billion price tag (a figure correct only if you include next year's financing and some funds for other anti-terrorist work). Most importantly, though, Edwards proved his mettle and stood his ground during the single most important event of his political career thus far. He clarified the remainders of the first presidential debate for Kerry, setting the stage for Friday's town-hall debate, where economic and health-care policy are likely to figure prominently. But given how hard it has been for any candidate to gain advantage on his strongest issues in these debates, Kerry has his work cut out for him in the two debates to come.
Garance Franke-Ruta is a Prospect senior editor.
