Last night I watched the Vice Presidential Debate between Vice President Dick Cheney and Senator John Edwards at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland on C-SPAN2. I wanted to write a bit about the debate.

Overall the debate was actually much better than the Presidential Debate last week. I felt that it was a lot less controlled, and a lot more real to life. My impressions of the candidates were:

Dick Cheney came off as a real asshole overall. He kept throwing out unnecessary “zingers”, kept smirking, and kept showing entirely too much with his facial expressions. He avoided a lot of questions, kept fidgiting with his chin and his hands, and continuously talked down to John Edwards. Overall he made me feel uneasy.

John Edwards seemed very down to earth, had a slightly southern accent, and overall seemed like a “nice guy”. Even though you know he doesn’t care for Dick Cheney or the Bush administration, he didn’t talk down to Cheney or seem condescending. He acted very professional throughout the whole debate, took a lot of notes, and stayed very much on-topic. He seems young, and in touch with reality. Overall he made me feel good, made me like him.

As the debate went on, Cheney constantly smirked, strayed way off topic a few times, and seemed to avoid a few questions. He kept throwing out “zingers” like:

Cheney: With respect to the cost, it wasn’t $200 billion. You probably weren’t there to vote for that.

and

Cheney: Your rhetoric, Senator, would be a lot more credible if there was a record to back it up. There isn’t.

One of the biggest and most interesting things that was discussed was Cheney and his relationship to Halliburton. This topic came up several times, and I felt that Cheney was trying desperately to avoid the subject. Halliburton is a huge, corrupt mess, and Cheney knows it.

I think, overall, in my opinion, John Edwards won by a huge margin.

During tonight’s Vice Presidential debate, Dick Cheney said the following:

There’s no better antidote to poverty than a good well-paying job.

Really?! Hmm, I thought the cure to being poor would be a low paying job!

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Update: It seems most sites have declared victory for John Kerry, and it looks like a pretty steep one. 70-20 or so.

I watched the first presidential debate last night. It was quite entertaining overall, as I fully expected it to be. I think, overall, John Kerry is much more professional than George Bush.

While Kerry was speaking, Bush was fooling around, making smirks, chuckling to himself, or just looking annoyed. While Bush was speaking, Kerry was just rock solid, occasionally nodding his head in agreement with a point, or acknowledging something Bush had said.

Bush spent a lot of time saying “uhhh” or just in dumb silence searching for words (sometimes up to maybe 4 seconds, after which he’d always burst out not with some complex word, but something like “group of folks”). Kerry seemed to be really on target and sharp, and knew what he was saying, why he was saying it, and it seemed to come from himself, not from some writer or advisor.

On the actual issues, I felt that Bush spent a lot of time just avoiding issues instead of facing them, and especially instead of explaining them. His repeated confusion of Iraq and Al Qaeda, and especially his reference to “they attacked us” as justification for the pre-emptive Iraq war was really telling.

Kerry seemed very humble and even once outright said “I made a mistake”. Kerry seemed to really know how the US is looked upon in the World view today, whereas Bush’s ideas of that made me chuckle. Amazingly I think Bush really does think that the World’s opinion of the US is “just fine”. I particularly loved how Bush made many references to “the terrorists” and how they “hate freedom” and they’re upset that if Iraq and Afghanistan become free, then they’ve lost… right.

Bush really made me laugh when he said: “I understand how hard it is. I get the casualty reports every day. I see on the TV screens how hard it is.”.

Once again, watching Bush on TV, I am embarrassed that he is my president.