Why Cheney Won

Why Cheney won:
The Arizona Republic-Oct. 5, 2004 08:20 PM
THERE'S NOTHING PRETTY
ABOUT HIM
Phil Boas
"Plugged In" editor

Dick Cheney won this debate not because he made John Edwards look like a playful puppy, though he did. He won because he drove a sword into the man who wasn't there - John Kerry.

The Democrats are going to lose this election because Americans don't trust them to manage national defense. Cheney ruthlessly reinforced that historic predilection. In other times, the vice president might have seemed a cold fish, too sober and stiff to connect with the American people. But in an age of car bombings and beheadings, he stands the supremely serious man. These are times such men are prized.

We don't want varsity lettermen with Colgate smiles. We want hard, tough, seasoned leaders who will methodically destroy the people who would kill us.

Cheney was methodical in the way he went after Kerry - not Edwards - chopping down a Massachusetts senator who tilts and totters with every stiff breeze. Kerry's fatal flaw, and Cheney knows this, is that he has wavered far too many times to ever be credible on the war.

The message the vice president drove home tonight was not so much that Kerry flip-flops, but that Kerry is supremely unserious about the most serious issue of our time.