Mullings A Political Cyber Column By Rich Galen

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This is Dick Cheney

Friday October 6, 2000

From Centre College
Danville, Kentucky

The Gore campaign must have decided Joe Lieberman was not doing as well as they wanted him to do, because they trotted out their spin teams with seven minutes to go in the debate.

The participants in the Fox News/Speakout.com dial poll apparently agreed with the Gore campaign - they didn't think Senator Lieberman did so well, either. To see the results of the dial poll, go here

In summary, Republicans and Independents viewed Cheney's responses more favorably than they did Lieberman's responses. While we know from experience that Vice Presidential debates don't change very many minds, this will go a long, long way toward ridding Cheney of the "rusty campaigner" handle.

Following Tuesday's debate the Gore campaign had to spend the next day knocking down negative stories about a mystery trip to Texas, a woman travelling in an RV - which turned out to be owned by a labor union; and a cloying story about a girl in a school so poor she didn't have a desk, which wasn't true. The school is brand new and it was a first day scheduling issue, not a broken down school issue.

A newly invigorated Cheney will emerge from this debate which means moving forward from this week, the Bush/Cheney ticket has to feel it can hit the campaign trail with a significant sense of confidence.

The bottom line? Cheney wins and beats the spread.

Joe Lieberman complaining about the Administration not getting the amount of money it had requested to implement its energy policy requires us to forget that Bill Clinton has not been the least bit shy about vetoing appropriations bills he didn't like. Let's watch that powerful Republican Congress successfully shove the remaining spending bills down the throat of the Clinton/Gore Administration - again.

Lieberman misquoted the Declaration of Independence when he said there are certain "inalienable rights�" The phrase is "certain UNalienable rights." Irregardless, he is very smart.

When the moderator apologized for giving two consecutive questions to Senator Lieberman first, Lieberman said, "Good for you, Jim, it means you're human. Like we are." The moderator's first name, of course, is Bernie.

Danville, Kentucky is about 40 miles south of Lexington. It is not very close to Louisville so if you are driving from, say, Columbus, Ohio to Danville and you punch Louisville into your Hertz GPS device you will be very, very disappointed. Trust me on this.

Centre College, the host facility, was founded in 1819, has a student population of about 1,000 and resides in Danville which is in a dry county - no beer, no wine, no booze. The media refreshment tent, which is sponsored at each debate by Anheuser-Busch, was not nearly as popular here as it was in Boston Tuesday night. Trust me on this, too.

The situation in Yugoslavia dominated the mid-afternoon chatter in the media center which was in the college's gym. The questions: What is the difference between Yugoslavia and Serbia? And What was Slobodan Milosevic president of? Caused a considerable amount of head scratching among some of the reporters to whom the questions were posed. "That's why we're called POLITICAL reporters," one said. "You want to know that stuff go cover a General Assembly debate."

The brochure handed out by the Center College staff included a note that U.S. Vice President Adlai Stevenson was an alumnus of Centre. More head scratching. Carl Luebsdorf, Washington bureau chief of the Dallas Morning News not only knew that THAT Adlai Stevenson was VP under Grover Cleveland, and was the OTHER Adlai Stevenson's grandfather, but he went on to detail the history of just about every other Stevenson - and Steven-daughter - in the family tree.

Each side brought the about the same number of spinners to Danville as they had to Boston, but because the media centre was about a third the size of the University of Massachusetts site, it looked like a lot more.

The space was so severely limited that the pre-debate spin cycle had many of the spinners spinning each other.

At 8:53 - seven minutes early - both candidates were introduced onto the stage. The media center got dead quiet listening to moderator Bernard Shaw chatting with the candidates on the closed circuit feed over an open microphone. Disappointment was palpable when the producers realized it and turned the sound off.

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Copyright © 2000 Richard A. Galen

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