In a sharp-elbowed debate over the credibility to lead a country at war, Democrat John Edwards accused the White House on Tuesday of “not being straight” with Americans about Iraq, while Vice President Dick Cheney said presidential candidate John Kerry lacked the “qualities” needed to serve as commander in chief.
In the lone face-to-face meeting between the running mates of the 2004 campaign, Edwards accused Cheney of using the campaign stump to draw a non-existent connection between Saddam Hussein and the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Cheney denied ever making such a linkage.
During the televised 90-minute session, a sit-down forum held at Case Western Reserve University, the candidates fielded questions spanning a variety of issues ranging from tax cuts to tort reform to gay marriage. The two responded with pointed exchanges.
Edwards challenged Cheney’s integrity, calling into question his record as chief executive of Halliburton Co., the giant oil services company that is under federal investigation.
Cheney, in a chilly exchange, criticized Edwards’ record in the Senate, noting that he had missed so many Senate Intelligence Committee meetings and votes that his hometown newspaper called him “Senator Gone.” And Cheney, who as vice president also serves as presiding officer of the Senate, called Edwards’ voting record “not very distinguished.”
Edwards retorted by excoriating Cheney’s record as a five-term member of the House, noting that he voted against the Head Start early childhood program and numerous other social policy issues.
“He voted against the Department of Education. He voted against funding for Meals on Wheels for seniors,” the Democrat said. “He voted against a holiday for Martin Luther King. He voted against a resolution calling for the release of Nelson Mandela in South Africa.”
Edwards, a first-term North Carolina senator, also moved to counter criticism that he lacked the experience to help Kerry, a Massachusetts senator, lead the country.
“Mr. Vice President, I don’t think the country can take four more years of this type of experience,” he said at the debate, noting later, “One thing that’s very clear is that a long resume does not equal good judgment.”
With polls showing a closer race following the first debate last week between the presidential contenders in which Kerry’s performance was given the edge over President Bush’s, it fell to Edwards to try to extend the newfound momentum against the Republican incumbents while Cheney’s task was to try to forcefully counter with criticism of the Democratic ticket’s voting record.
The vice presidential debate also served as an entree for the second debate between Kerry and Bush, a town hall-style forum to be held Friday at Washington University in St. Louis.
Discussing the economy, Edwards said the Republican administration was the first in 70 years that failed to create more jobs than it lost and that its priorities were misguided in supporting the outsourcing of employment to other countries.
But Cheney said more than 100 million Americans have benefited from Bush tax cuts.
Edwards also criticized the Republicans for doing little to curb rising health-care costs, including increases for Medicare premiums affecting the elderly.
“Five million Americans have lost their health care coverage. Medical costs are skyrocketing,” he said, contending the Bush administration has failed to provide affordable health care because it refused to “stand up to drug companies and insurance companies.”
Cheney, however, contended lawsuits filed by trial lawyers had contributed to the rise in medical costs. He also said the newly established Medicare drug benefit that will go into effect in 2006 will help provide seniors with up to $1,300 a year to purchase prescription drugs.
Going on the offense
Edwards took to the offense on the GOP record in the White House while Cheney, after being forced to play defense, began questioning the leadership abilities of the Democratic team.
The meeting between the two men came exactly four years after Cheney’s last debate appearance, in which he and then-Democratic vice presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman engaged in a genteel discussion without personal attacks.
But the debate Tuesday night was filled with jabs.
Edwards questioned the credibility of the Bush-Cheney administration’s handling of the war in Iraq and of an economy that has stumbled. Cheney, meanwhile, contended the Kerry-Edwards record on the war was one of vacillation and that the economic proposals offered by the Democrats would further weaken business and job creation.
Edwards, 51, who had a 20-year career as a successful civil attorney before he was elected to the Senate, homed in on Iraq and the attempts by the GOP to say progress there is helping to fight the war on terrorism.
Turning up the heat
“Mr. Vice President, you are still not being straight with the American people,” he said. “I mean, the reality you and George Bush continue to tell people, first, that things are going well in Iraq–the American people don’t need us to explain this to them, they see it on their television every single day.”
But Cheney, 63, who served as a White House chief of staff from 1975-77, a Wyoming congressman and a defense secretary before becoming one of the most influential vice presidents in history, maintained the Democrats’ vow to gain more international involvement in stabilizing Iraq and fighting the war on terrorism could not be successful because of their varying positions.
“These are two individuals who have been for the war when the headlines were good and against it when their poll ratings were bad,” Cheney said of Kerry and Edwards.
As a result of such inconsistencies, he said, “I’m saying specifically that I don’t believe [Kerry] has the qualities we need in a commander in chief because I don’t think, based on his record, that he would pursue the kind of aggressive policies that need to be pursued if we’re going to defeat these terrorists.”
Edwards countered Cheney’s criticism that Kerry voiced the need in the first presidential debate for a “global test” that would legitimatize U.S. efforts to go to war to fight terrorists.
“John Kerry will never give up control over the security of the United States of America to any other country,” the senator said. “We will not outsource our responsibility to keep this country safe.”
Edwards also chided Cheney for trying to draw a connection between toppling Hussein and the Sept. 11 attacks “because there is no connection.”
“The senator’s got his facts wrong,” Cheney responded. “I have not suggested there’s a connection between Iraq and 9/11, but there’s clearly an established Iraqi track record with terror.”
Cheney, however, told National Public Radio in January: “I think there’s overwhelming evidence that there was a connection between Al Qaeda and the Iraqi government.”
Edwards also assailed Cheney’s leadership of Halliburton, the Texas-based company that Cheney headed before becoming vice president.
The Halliburton shadow
Edwards maintained that under Cheney, Halliburton “did business with sworn enemies of the United States, paid millions of dollars in fines for providing false financial information, it’s under investigation for bribing foreign officials.” And he noted that the firm, which has received no-bid contract work in Iraq, is not being financially penalized.
After unsuccessfully seeking more time to answer from moderator Gwen Ifill, Cheney said the reason Democrats “keep mentioning Halliburton is because they’re trying to throw up a smokescreen. They know the charges are false.”
The vice president said that while he often is in the Senate chamber as president of the Senate, Tuesday’s night debate marked the first time he had met Edwards.
The Kerry campaign, however, said Cheney had met Edwards on at least two prior occasions: at the 2001 National Prayer Breakfast, in which the vice president acknowledged the North Carolina senator’s presence in his remarks, and during the 2003 swearing-in of Elizabeth Dole as North Carolina’s second senator.
Hot-button issue
One uncontested moment of the debate occurred when Edwards credited the relationship that Cheney has with his gay daughter, Mary. While Cheney said he appreciated the comments, the vice president still voiced support for a federal constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage–an issue that Edwards said was using the Constitution as a “political tool.”
Tuesday night’s debate played out against the background of one of the most intensely fought-over campaign states in the nation and a state hard hit by the economy.
Bush defeated Al Gore in Ohio by 3.6 percent, or 176,000 votes, and surveys in the state show a tight race, particularly because of a tough job situation.
In August, Ohio’s unemployment rate was 6.3 percent, up from July as well as from August a year earlier, compared with a 5.4 percent rate for the nation. Overall, 370,000 people were out of work in Ohio in August.
The debate’s host city, Cleveland, was recently ranked by the U.S. Census Bureau as the nation’s poorest major city, with a poverty rate of 31.3 percent last year and an unemployment rate of 12.2 percent last month.
