October 06, 2004
And The Winner Is... - An Update
filed under: Idle ChatterSo last night I said "The debate, minus of course little details like the truth and the facts, and morality, and soul, can be played as a draw." Except it turns out "truth and the facts" aren't going to be that easy to subtract.
Last night, of the "the first time I ever met you was when we walked out onstage tonight" line, I said "That was a devestating cheap shot body blow." And it was - it was delivered with measured malice, like a trained killer putting one in the back of someone's head and taking a bit of professional pleasure at it.
The key is, it's the kind of line that will stick with people. "Yeah," they'll say the next day, "but did you hear when Cheney said it was the FIRST TIME they'd MET!" It's the kind of line that can sit and eat away at public awareness. It's the kind of line that can give a campaign cancer.
Except, as everyone now knows, it wasn't true. They've met not once, not twice, but three times.
The problem, then, for Bush/Cheney, becomes: Edwards went out there to paint Cheney as untrustworthy, as someone who is willing to decieve the American people. He may or may not have succeeded during the debate. He may have sown some doubt, but Cheney is so damn calm and sounds so damn rational that he may have countered a lot of it.
But now there's a smoking gun. There are pictures and video. It's exactly the kind of simple, meaningless, easy-to-package thought bullet that the media and the public just eat right up. A simple, unambiguous lie, told for political gain.
Keith Olbermann blogged the debate as a boxing match (a terrifically entertaining way to do it, damn him). Last night he gave it to Cheney, in a close decision, but added a proviso: "if Democrats can prove they did meet... prime memory of the bout could be turned into Republican disaster."
Sure enough, this morning Olbermann scathingly revokes the VPs "victory."
Posted by rjt at October 6, 2004 11:55 AM