More Yapping

To paraphrase Dick Cheney, it's hard to know where to start with last night's debate. One thing that annoys me greatly about debates is the idea of side-stepping the questions directly asked of you. Cheney danced a bit when dealing the administration's changing their minds about the Department of Homeland Security and the 9/11 Commission. I would have liked to have heard his response to that topic. On the other side, Edwards barely answered any questions directed to him. It was painful to listen to his responses. One of the funniest ones was in response to a question about his own qualifications, where he basically discussed Iraq. The various sheets of yellow legal paper which he was ripping and arraying across the desk during Cheney's reponses must have all had the word "Iraq" repeated on each line. When the economy is no longer tanking and therefore no longer a talking point, switch to Iraq. This is a gamble that the Kedwards ticket will lose.

There were a few doozies, but one of the best was Edwards' response to a question concerning same-sex marriages:

Now, as to this question, let me say first that I think the vice president
and his wife love their daughter. I think they love her very much. And you
can't have anything but respect for the fact that they're willing to talk
about the fact that they have a gay daughter, the fact that they embrace
her. It's a wonderful thing.

Way to go, Senator! Bring your opponent's gay daughter into the mix. Cheney took the high road in response:

Well, Gwen, let me simply thank the senator for the kind words he said about
my family and our daughter. I appreciate that very much.

The impertinence of the junior senator was met with consumate professionalism from the most qualified Vice President in the history of the union.

I was hoping, by some miracle, that I wouldn't have to listen to Edward's more smarmy side as he appealed to the public with stories of hurt children and cracker-barrel, folksy, down-home imagery, but I was quickly disappointed. I was hoping he wouldn't pull out Us and Them, but he did, in the form of "Big Insurance Companies" and "Big Drug Companies" against the patient, and the "wealthy" against the "worker". Standard Democrat talking points, used by those who don't realize that AIDS is less of a death-sentence because of those Big Bad Companies, and that wealth is created by work and is earned, not distibuted.

So many points, not enough time. I'll just pick one to wrap up with. Now that Germany and France have told us to go pound sand regardless of who is in the Oval Office, the Kedwards' insistance on international coalition building is at best reduced to a naive political exigency. Gwen's question to Edwards on this point was very exact, and the Senator didn't even pretend to answer the question. It must be very grating when the international community preempts your talking points. This is the second time such a bomb has been dropped on their campaign, the frst when Iran refused to even consider receiving nuclear fuel from a President Kerry. More on that later. In the words of Mort Kondracke, Cheney walks away from this debate leaving Edwards' looking like a "dog yapping at a grown-up's heels".