Bush/Cheney need first-rate showing

8 October 2004

This is the first column I've ever written.

If you've read these pages before, you might question that, pointing out (if you did enough research) that my byline has appeared 354 times in the last five years.

Yes, but still, this is my first column. How can I say that? Well, I've decided to use "first" in the same way that Dick Cheney does, as when he said to John Edwards at Wednesday night's debate, "The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight."

In fact, according to news reports, Cheney had met Edwards at least three times before. The two met at Sen. Elizabeth Dole's swearing in on Jan. 8, 2003. On April 8, 2001, they met each other at a taping of "Meet the Press." Two months before then, they sat together for a couple of hours at a Senate prayer breakfast.

In other words, Cheney and I are using "first" in a rhetorical sense, as a way to get across a zinger (or just the lead of a column). The underlying truth is largely irrelevant.

Of course, for some of you that may be a problem. So much so, in fact, that rather than helping George W. Bush, the vice presidential debate may have made things worse.

Which is why, coming into tonight's debate, Bush is in trouble.

It's fascinating to watch the way debate performances get digested over time. The early read after last week's presidential debate - mainly as a result of some instant polls done by the television networks - was that John Kerry won. But it was a narrow win, one that left pundits predicting it would not sway many.

A week later, however, and that victory on points is now perceived as a trouncing, one that has given the Kerry campaign fresh momentum, material for new ads and a surge upward in most national polls.

Conversely, the early read on the VP debate was that Cheney staunched the bleeding, providing some gravitas to a president who had appeared weak and out of his element. Yet the thrust of Edwards' attack was that Cheney and Bush were "not being straight with the American people." Cheney did little in the debate to refute that; indeed, his clever line about having never met Edwards now seems to be backfiring, feeding into questions about the administration's credibility. Cheney may well have shored up the traditional GOP base, but perhaps at the cost of alienating more centrist, undecided voters.

Kerry and Edwards must be delighted.

Yet it could all change tonight. That's because Kerry's "win" was more a consequence of Bush's failings than it was the Democrat's successes.

In truth, it wasn't a badly argued debate. Bush justified the invasion of Iraq as a logical extension of taking the war to the terrorists while Kerry distinguished al-Qaeda from Saddam Hussein. The candidates had an intense exchange over North Korea, disagreeing sharply over the use of bilateral vs. multilateral negotiations (although I bet that most of those watching - and I include myself in that number - have no idea who was right). Throughout, Bush was less articulate (and vastly more repetitive) in making his case, but one's coherence doesn't matter in the long run. Either you buy into Bush or Kerry's vision of the world or not. The way it is expressed in a debate doesn't count for all that much.

But intangibles - things such as demeanor, confidence and appearance - do matter greatly in a debate, and it was here that Kerry scored his true victory. Kerry looked presidential; Bush did not. Bush talked a lot about leadership but didn't look particularly steady. Kerry, meanwhile, came across as stolid and self-possessed - dull, perhaps, but a safe and sturdy kind of dull.

Yet even though Bush blew it last week, one could see flashes of the stuff that served him so well in the 2000 debates against Al Gore. When moderator Jim Lehrer challenged him to justify the loss of more than 1,000 soldiers in Iraq, for example, Bush gave a moving and deeply personal response. And later, when Lehrer tried to get a rise out of Bush by asking if he was upset that Kerry had (in effect) called him a liar, the president gently brushed it off, saying, "Oh, I'm a pretty calm guy. I don't take it personally."

No doubt, the president comes into this evening's debate with dozens of admonitions ringing in his head ("Don't slouch! Don't smirk! Don't keep saying, `It's hard work!' "). All that could be unnerving and might well be his undoing.

Or perhaps he rises to the occasion, leaving behind one bad performance and reconnecting with voters. Kerry's task tonight is straightforward: Continue to look presidential. Whether that works, however, depends entirely on George Bush.