Wednesday, October 06, 2004
Impression #1.
All right, I have to get this written before my weak-willed thoughts are subsumed by the wall of spin and opinion no doubt bearing on me: the VP debate was a tie, IMHO. In my wife's opinion, Cheney won. We're both die-hard Kerry-Edwards supporters, by the way (as if you didn't know!).
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I think Cheney's performance probably energized the "party faithful" who were disappointed at Bush's performance.
But the point of a debate is to sway the undecideds, and there I think Edwards probably had the edge. Edwards spoke several times about the plans Kerry and he had — to fix the job situation, healthcare, Iraq strategy, foreign policy, etc. Cheney spent his time attacking rather than informing about his team's plans.
Cheney came across as vicous and petty, not generally traits which win people over. Edwards was no worse than neutral, but generally positive.
Edwards did falter a bit towards the end — but Cheney was evasive throughout, shoehorning in his talking points whether they fit the questions or not (Edwards did this too, but to a markedly lesser degree).
At first, I was a little surprised that Edwards let so many of Cheney's obvious lies pass without comment, but a (conservative) political blogger suggested a reasonable explanation: it's much smarter to let the media pick up on the lies afterwards, and bring them into greater public awareness, rather than giving your opponent a chance to explain them away (thus defusing them) at the time.
I'd just like to know who these "undecided" people are. I certainly haven't met any, even though I live in one of the swing states.
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