Rock and Roll Part Deux
I particularly liked when Cheney told Edwards “You’re no Jack Kennedy”, and when Peter Comejo opened up with “Who am I? Why am I here?”
They both “did” okay, and in the end it doesn’t matter much. Later on I’ll parse the transcript to show how often Edwards mentioned Kerry, and how infrequently Cheney mentioned Bush… these things don’t happen by accident, and allow yourself to figure out what that’s about yourownself. If Dick Cheney seemed to pretty much mail it in for the second half of the debate, the domestic agenda, you can excuse that with the simple factor that Dick Cheney could care less about Domestic issues.
The degree of significance to this debate can be ascertained by its showing on… CSPAN 2. They show dodgeball tournaments on ESPN 2… they show vice-presidential debates on CSPAN 2.
Clicking around, I see that NBC News brought on the blogger behind Wonkette and a contributer to Politicalwire blog. For some reason, I must roll my eyes. The bloggers are all the rage these days. Yes. Guy (or Gal) With A Website. Very profound movement that is, the Blogs.
For the record: to the degree that I can have such strong emotions (maybe this is a weak example of this emotion?) I hate wonkette.com.
Joseph Biden says that Edwards won the debate. Lindsey Graham says that Cheney won the debate. It’s funny how that happens.
I click over to PBS, which is concluding their “Newshour” and will show the debate at 9:00. Here, they show footage from previous vice-presidential debates for a documentary that they’re going to air sometime in the near future concerning the various debates of lore.
I do remember Bob Dole’s explanation for his “Democrat Wars” comment, and it probably comes up once every four years. “It was in the 400 page Debate Prep that the Ford Administration sent me, and I probably should have used better discretion.” Yes indeedy.
What we forget about the Quayle bit is that the panelists — Tom Brokaw and Brit Hume included, kept asked him three times variations of the question “You? YOU?”. Quayle looked pretty muffed in trying to articulate a coherent response. This was also at a time when the audience could react. Quayle insists that he saw the Bentson comment coming, but wasn’t really expecting the crowd to get into as much as it did. (He had his partisans who responded in kind to his response… something along the lines of “You should be ashamed at yourself.” At any rate, Quayle insists it’s a victory of emotionalism over facts (the fact being, he has as much experience as John Kennedy did in 1960.)
1992, and you begin to feel sorry for Stockdale. The thing here is that he might have represented himself a heck of a lot better with today’s format, as it would have given him more time to get something in edge-wise. As it was, Quayle and Gore were allowed to engage in a sort of rapid-fire exchange… which has its merits. (For one thing, there’s better opportunity to respond to other’s charges… today we get one candidate making a comment, and the other having to short-shift a later question to get to a response to that question.) Stockdale ain’t a politician, and was exasperated by the scene of two politicians going off on one another.
I have this feeling of dread at seeing Ferraro’s, then and now… and I don’t quite know why. Similar to seeing Mondale’s face… perhaps it has to do with “lost 49 freaking states.” Evidentally, she won her debate against Bush — winning seeming to be distilled to “getting in the soundbyte that everyone talks about the next day.”
The PBS show apparently couldn’t manage to dredge anything up for 1996 or 2000. As I said earlier: does anyone remember anything at all happening at those shows?
Oh. You were wanting a look at the content of the debate? (Well… the terrorists in El Salvador were our guys, but… beyond that. Hm.)
