] WASHINGTON - Sen. John Edwards and Vice President Cheney clashed
] repeatedly in their debate last night, making impressive-sounding
] but misleading statements on issues including the war in Iraq,
] tax cuts and each other's records, often omitting key facts along
] the way.

Here are my own thoughts, after watching the debate live.

First, I think Cheney is a much better speaker than Bush. Between Kerry & Edwards, I think Kerry's better. Edwards struck me as a windup toy who was pre-programmed to say certain things in particular ways, but that he was incapable of original thought. When challenged, he'd fall back to rhetoric I've heard countless times before.

I had a lot of respect for the interviewer. She came up with interesting questions, and I especially enjoyed that she threw in a couple ringers, in a similar way that I think I would have if I were in her position. One of them was to ask a question about a narrowly-focused issue (the % of AIDS cases among a specific age demographic of black women), which though important, was one that the candidates would *not* have prepared for. The other, was to ask a question they'd heard a hundred times before, but to have them answer it in a way *different* than they normally did. In both cases, I was impressed with the way that Cheney handled it. He seemed to have the capacity to actually think about what he was saying. Edwards, on the other hand, kept falling back to old patterns. For example, when the interviewer asked, "Without referring to your running mate, can you explain why you should be Vice President?", Cheney handled the format just fine, but Edwards kept screwing up and repeating his "Kerry macros".

Also, there was one time that Cheney said something that was incorrect, which was when he said he'd never met Edwards before. After the debate, Edwards was reminded **by his wife** that he *had* met Cheney. And then Edwards was off in the spin room, accusing Cheney of again "misleading the American people". But if Edwards was so fired up about it, he should have brought it up *during* the debate, not after a reminder from his wife. What this tells me is that though they may indeed have met, that it was such a brief encounter that obviously neither of them made any serious impression on the other.

When I watch a debate, I'm listening hard to both candidates. Not just to hear what they're saying, but to observe how they're saying it, and compare it with other things that they've been saying. I'm also listening hard to distinguish what's genuinely coming from their heart, and what's just repeated sound bytes, or carefully-crafted messages that have been extensively wordsmithed by speech-writing teams or their campaign managers. In the case of last night's debate, I think that both Cheney and Edwards were occasionally guilty of being party mouthpieces who were repeating stuff that they didn't really believe, but were told that they had to say in order to get elected, or to speak to that "lowest common denominator" of America that doesn't bother reading newspapers, and makes decisions based on sound bites. But, having said that, I also saw a clear difference between the two men, on the *quantity* of that kind of BS that they threw around. Edwards seemed to have nearly 100% "pre-canned" messages, with very little in the way of original thought. Cheney, on the other hand, seemed to me to be more often coming from a position of heartfelt passion. He was talking about what he believed. With Edwards, I got more of a sense that he was thinking, "I need to say what people are going to believe, in order to get elected, and then I'll just go around apologizing to everyone and saying, "Hey, no hard feelings, it was just politics, right?" And that kind of demeanor bothers me.

Bottom line: After watching the debate, nothing's changed my mind about whether to vote for Bush or Kerry. But I do have a higher opinion of Cheney. And a lower opinion of Edwards.

- Elonka

The VP Debate