My honest take on the veep debates...

[Artemis Bunyon]

On Tuesday night, North Carolina Senator John Edwards debated sitting (literally) vice-preznit Dick Cheney, and it was one of the strangest political spectacles in recent memory. And in a year in which the Powers That Be have been allowed to get away with bluffing their way through some truly incredible fuckups -- remember Chalabi? -- that's saying something.

First, a few comments on style:

Edwards, a champion litigator long touted as a silver-tongued smooth talker, failed to live up to his pre-debate hype. Normally an engaged and animated communicator, the Senator was crippled by the sit-down format, a concession to Cheney, whose circulatory system is as leaky as Iraq's oil pipelines.

Edwards was hesitant, and even a little stumbling at times. He relied too much on John Kerry's best lines. Even though he's only a decade younger than Cheney, there was an obvious "gravitas gap". The interaction between the participants had the uneasy vibe of a high-school confrontation. Edwards, the freshman student council keener, versus Cheney, the senior bully jock who's parents "own this town", as the cliché goes. Moderator Gwen Ifill played the role of stern but clueless vice principal.

Edwards eventually got his licks in, rocking Cheney back on his heels by hammering hard on Halliburton's flagrant profiteering, past and present. And there was definitely a Kennedy/Nixon factor. Edwards looks fantastic (let's face it), and he oozes the kind of courtly Southern charm that might bring out the apolitical bimbo vote, just "cuz he's so durn cute!" It's shallow, yes, but in a race as close as this one is, both parties are probably giving less traditional demographics some thought.

On the other hand, if Edwards hadn't found his stride somewhere near the halfway point -- around the same time Cheney started looking like he needed a long hard suck from an oxygen tank -- yer old pal Jerky would have had to call the debate for Cheney.

Which is understandable. The man hasn't slithered unscathed through four of the nation's most criminally corrupt administrations -- not to mention a career in the private sector that rivals Ernst Stavro Blofeld's -- on looks alone. Listening to his paradoxically soothing, fatherly voice, one could almost be lulled into thinking, "Hey! This guy isn't so bad!"

Luckily, True Evil often finds a way to shine through the gaps in the camouflage. This is why Dick Cheney is one of the most unpopular public figures in American history, with an approval rating perpetually hovering in the high 20s. Newt Gingrich was Tom Frickin' Cruise compared to him. Furthermore, studies have shown that Cheney's appeal lies almost exclusively with the kinds of people who like people like Dick Cheney. You know the type: Bitter old white men of frustrated ambition; ironic libertarians brimming with suicidal spite; CEO-worshipping "management cult" cultists; snuff-movie-collecting billionaire Satanists.

For most of the rest of us, Cheney's evil is palpably manifest. We don't even have to know the barely-believable details and mind-bending contradictions that make up his life story, as was recently addressed in the stunning CBC documentary, Dick Cheney, an Unauthorized Biography (full video, audio only). We can see it in his body language, which was on glorious display this Tuesday. Hunched over the desk, grimacing like a thirsty vampire, his clutching gargoyle fists reaching out as though to throttle the very air that sustains his shuddering, zombie carcass… even his own shadow thinks Dick Cheney is creepy.

Now, yer old pal Jerky realizes that some of you out there will disagree with his contention that Cheney radiates the kind of malice usually confined to those who use their astral forms to travel around the globe and whisper unspeakable obscenities into the ears of slumbering, octogenarian nuns. To you, I say check out this video of Cheney caught in the act of lecherously sizing up John Edwards' teenage daughter, Cate -- not once, but twice -- and maybe you'll see what I mean. When you factor in the fact that he's got a lesbian daughter and a wife who moonlights as a sapphic erotica novelist, well... Godzilla only knows knows what kind of degenerate fantasias were bubbling through the old man's mind. The Daily Dirt probably wouldn't even be allowed to link a banner to that shit!

For those who still fail to believe, there remains the now indisputable fact that the vice-preznit's debate rhetoric was, as William Rivers Pitt described it, "an avalanche of lies."

The examples of Cheney's falsehoods in the debate -- as with the administration he so obviously spearheads -- are legion. He lied about his history with Halliburton. He lied about there being a connection between Saddam and 9/11. He even lied about lying about there being a connection between Saddam and 9/11! Yer old pal Jerky doesn't have the time or space to go through all the lies, but thankfully, many other people did.

There are, however, a few examples I'd like to bring to your attention.

By now, most of you know that Cheney lied about never meeting Edwards prior to the debate. They had, in fact, met on at least two occasions, including at a Prayer Breakfast where their families sat together for hours. Thanks to the fine work done by the Democrats "immediate response" media team, photographs and video of the meeting aired on many news programs within minutes of the debate's finale.

Cheney also lied about Edwards' congressional attendance record. Furthermore, Dick lied about his own attendance record, claiming he presided over the sessions "nearly every Tuesday" when, in fact, he did so only twice in the last four years! Edwards actually stood in for Cheney as President of the Senate more times than Dick was there to preside! I guess running a Secret Fascist Shadow Government from the bowels of a West Virginia cave complex eats up a lot of Dick's spare time.

Another great moment was when Cheney accidentally directed debate-watchers to Factcheck.com (a site run by staunch Bush critic George Soros) instead of Factcheck.org, which he claimed had information clearing him of the Democrats' scurrilous charges regarding Halliburton. In any case, even Factcheck.org calls Cheney a liar. Help me out here: doesn't telling viewers that an organization that says you lied says you didn't lie mean you've just told another lie? It's all so confusing.

And then there was that one, brief moment when Cheney came close to losing control over the infernal forces that rage within him. It was after Edwards pointed out that Bush administration rhetoric about "a mighty coalition" was bogus, because Americans were shouldering 90% of the costs and 90% of the casualties. The following confrontation ensued:

CHENEY: Classic example. He won't count the sacrifice and the contribution of Iraqi allies. It's their country. They're in the fight. They're increasingly the ones out there putting their necks on the line to take back their country from the terrorists and the old regime elements that are still left. They're doing a superb job. And for you to demean their sacrifices strikes me as...

EDWARDS: Oh, I'm not...

CHENEY: ...as beyond...

EDWARDS: I'm not demeaning...

CHENEY: It is indeed. You suggested...

EDWARDS: No, sir, I did not...

CHENEY: ...somehow they shouldn't count, because you want to be able to say that the Americans are taking 90 percent of the sacrifice. You cannot succeed in this effort if you're not willing to recognize the enormous contribution the Iraqis are increasingly making to their own future.

Now hold on a second… casualties suffered by "Iraqi security forces" -- many of them killed by other Iraqi security forces -- are supposed to count towards the coalition death toll?! Well then, Dick better run and tell the Pentagon, because prior to Tuesday's vice-presidential debate, not a single dead Iraqi has ever been included among their coalition casualty announcements.

Of course, dishonesty manifests itself in more ways than just lies. For instance, there is one final moment from Tuesday's debate that I would like to draw your attention to. Cheney, simmering at Edwards' repeated Halliburton attacks, struck back hard:

CHENEY: The reason they keep trying to attack Halliburton is because they want to obscure their own record. And Senator, frankly, you have a record in the Senate that's not very distinguished. You've missed 33 out of 36 meetings in the Judiciary Committee, almost 70 percent of the meetings of the Intelligence Committee. You've missed a lot of key votes: on tax policy, on energy, on Medicare reform. Your hometown newspaper has taken to calling you "Senator Gone." You've got one of the worst attendance records in the United States Senate. Now, in my capacity as vice president, I am the president of Senate, the presiding officer. I'm up in the Senate most Tuesdays when they're in session. The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight.

IFILL: Senator Edwards, it's your turn to use 30 seconds for a complicated response...

EDWARDS: That was a complete distortion of my record. I know that won't come as a shock. The vice president, I'm surprised to hear him talk about records. When he was one of 435 members of the United States House, he was one of 10 to vote against Head Start, one of four to vote against banning plastic weapons that can pass through metal detectors. He voted against the Department of Education. He voted against funding for Meals on Wheels for seniors. He voted against a holiday for Martin Luther King. He voted against a resolution calling for the release of Nelson Mandela in South Africa. It's amazing to hear him criticize either my record or John Kerry's.

IFILL: Thirty seconds.

CHENEY: Oh, I think his record speaks for itself. And frankly, it's not very distinguished.

At least now we know what Dick Cheney believes to be the makings of a distinguished congressional record: voting to let seniors starve; to let Nelson Mandela continue to rot; to give the gun lobby whatever it wants, no matter how ludicrous; to spit on the legacy of America's greatest civil rights leader/hero/martyr; to deny children in poverty whatever meager scraps of federal assistance are being made available to them… this is what Dick Cheney thinks is "distinguished".

And you probably thought all that talk about evil was hyperbolic.

In the end sum, Cheney didn't come off too badly for a guy who probably deserves to be arrested, tried and for his no doubt countless crimes against all that is good and decent in the world. And considering Edwards was trying to put out a raging dump fire with a glass full of milk… I'd have to say he didn't come off too badly either.

So that's why yer old pal Jerky is calling it a draw.

[flordehinojos]

1. this was my take on the cheney/edwards study room lock up!

While everyone is focused on the, “who won?” spin over the Cheney/Edwards debate, I want to focus on the theatrics of what unfolded before my eyes on the television screen last night.

I turned the television on, and there, sitting at an angle from each other, in front of two writing tables, for what seemed to me to be interminable minutes, were Dick Cheney, John Edwards, and in front of them, with her back turned to the live audience at Case Western Reserve University’s Veale Center in Cleveland, Ohio, was the keeper of time, the asker of questions, the dominatrix of the moment by moment situation in which these two men faced each other, Gwen Ifill.

Like children under the watchful eye of a teacher who had ordered them not to speak until the bell rang, there they sat, silently, staring at each other, staring at the camera, staring at Ms. Ifill who was staring back at them and at the camera waiting for a signal which seemed never to want to come that they were “On the Air”.

Then the bell rang and Ms. Ifill, with stern voice, presented her credentials to the audience and began reading her introduction and list of instructions for what could have passed, in the unfolding hour, as a defense of one’s dissertation on whose ticket can best govern the country, or for a list of thou-shall or shall-not-do at a GRE examination.

With her first question asked with the same passion of a priest in a confessional trying to determine the guilt, or lack of guilt of a sinner’s sin, Ms. Ifill began her hour long grilling of Dick Cheney and John Edwards.

What followed reminded me of a bad therapy session between a therapist intent on having a patient spill out some insight into his illness and a patient who needs to defend his resistance to insights at any and all cost. It was like a “yes... but” merry-go-round from which neither man could step down. And, so, the merry-go-round, in which one man was intent in not backing down from the peddling of his lies, while the other was equally determined to let no lie stand, went on, interminably.

The moderator, Gwen Ifill, charged with choosing the topics and preparing the questions for this televised event was unable to move the agenda forward. She was unable to let oxygen and air flow through into the question and answer period given to these two men, who, more and more looked like they were sitting in an after hour school detention room forced to finish their home work before they could be free to stand up, move around and go home.

What a dizzying experience! Round and round they went. One lying. The other one not. I once heard a judge say that the person who lies breaks no sweat. A cool analogy for the reptilian Dick Cheney lying through his teeth last night.

Ifill’s snuffing out the oxygen from the debate was aided in great part by the Bush team’s authoritarian demands of thirty-two rules of engagement, a pre-condition set for the debates, which, straightjacketed freedom of movement between the participants and between the free and democratic exchange of ideas and positions, directly, by, and between the two contenders.

Who won?

I think democracy lost last night.

[Artemis Bunyon]

2. I agree absolutely.

Ifill was awfull.

[flordehinojos]

3. Yes!

She could have moved the question/answer period differently!:) :-) :)