28 Days Later
WASHINGTON, Oct. 5, 2004 — -- NOTED NOW
TODAY'S SCHEDULE (all times ET)
The vice presidential debate is today.
28 days until election day
3 days until the second presidential debate
8 days until the third presidential debate
NEWS SUMMARY
For the love of sanity, please stop contributing to the CW debate about whether Cheney v. Edwards will impact the election's outcome.
In the end, it will have dominated nearly 10 percent of the remaining news cycle time between now and election day.
That means the "winner" (if there is one) will buy his side some positive press, leading into Friday's high-stakes "Beat Me in St. Louis" showdown.
There are plenty of table-settin', curtain-raisin' looks at the veep chatfest below — we would just ask, again, that a media elite obsessed with polls, momentum, and style try to at least to pretend to care about substance, ideas, and leadership when filtering the Cleveland doings.
The debate is 90 minutes, with the rules of questions and answers roughly the same as in Coral Gables, except that the three humans (PBS' classy and brilliant Gwen Ifill is the third) will be seated at a table.
As of this writing, Bush and Cheney don't plan any public appearances before either the PeterTomDan network newscasts or the debate itself.
Kerry and Edwards, however, both have dayside events.
If you want other things to ponder during the day while we wait, you can choose from:
1. the Wall Street Journal 's jumping the gun on Friday's jobs numbers
2. both campaigns getting some more (secret) battleground state data
3. the media strategies of Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Bremer
4. the latest ABC News tracking poll
5. the fav/unfav of the House of Saud
6. the President's (Kerry-like) major speech tomorrow that might dominate the day and the rest of the week (or not)
7. Bob Shrum's lucky scarf (Note to Bob: it's colder in Cleveland than Miami … .)
8. A new BC04 ad called "Tort Reform," which is clearly designed to jab John Edwards and relies on somewhat tough to refute (at least thematically) OB-GYN malpractice insurance rates and hospital closures …
Tonight, you can watch and listen to ABC News coverage of the debate beginning at 9:00 pm ET on the ABC television network.
If you're in your car, listen to your favorite ABC News radio station, and if you've got a hankering for cable, check out ABC News Now's wall-to-wall coverage. And stay with Noted Now on ABC News.com for up-to-the-minute updates. LINK
And be sure to watch "Nightline" and "Good Morning America" for a complete wrap-up.
There's a baseball game on Fox tonight, apparently.
Both Cheney and Edwards will hold a post-debate rally; Cheney at 10:55 pm ET at Gray's Armory; Edwards at 11:15 pm ET on the Wade Oval Ellipse at University Circle.
Edwards also has that noon town hall meeting in Parma, OH.
Elsewhere, President Bush is in Washington with no public events.
Kerry has a single event, a 10:00 am ET town hall meeting in Tipton, IA, in which he will criticize the president's policies as having squeezed the middle class and hurt seniors. He will point out that, according to his campaign, "Iowa has the third largest percentage of senior citizens of any state and the lowest Medicare reimbursement rate in the country" and that 76,000 Iowans have lost their health insurance since January 2001.
On the Hill, the Senate holds a cloture vote on the intelligence reform bill. The final vote is expected to come by the end of the week. Yesterday the Senate rebuffed an attempt by the Appropriations Committee to limit the National Intelligence Director's budgetary authority. LINK
Laura Bush stumps in Milwaukee and Reno and Teresa Heinz Kerry is in St. Louis.
Cheney versus Edwards: the campaign previews:
Vice President Cheney arrives in Cleveland today after several down days in Wyoming where he prepared for tonight's debate with senior advisers.
ABC News' Karen Travers reports that top adviser Mary Matalin said the Vice President would "focus on the President's record" and talk about the future. Cheney will lay out the choice between the two tickets and why the President's policies will make Americans safer.
Matalin also claimed out that usually straight-forward, no-nonsense Cheney is a "substance sponge" — "There's no gimmicks; we're not trying to be fancy or funny or gimmicky."
BC04 chief strategist Matt Dowd told reporters yesterday that what the campaign hopes to accomplish tonight is "pretty simple."
"The Vice President has been traveling the country and he's going to do at this debate what he's been doing throughout this election and the campaign, which is explain to the American people why the President's policies are right for this country and the world in fighting the war on terror, in keeping our economy growing and responding to the new challenges in the twenty-first century," Dowd said.
Republicans are not over hyping the stakes in tonight's debate in Cleveland, but campaign officials and party officials are looking for Cheney's substance on the key issues to beat Edwards' style and charm.
ABC News' Beth Loyd reports that senior Kerry adviser Tad "Tad" Devine set a bar for Edwards tonight.
"He's going to have to be the stopper … the relief pitcher," Devine told reporters.
He argued that there is great voter interest in the election, the issues are real, and there is tremendous voter attention in these debates. When asked if Edwards feels more pressure because of Kerry's performance in the last debate, he said, "I don't know how you get more pressure."
When asked if Edwards will go after Cheney on Halliburton, Devine said he doesn't expect Cheney to use the same language he used on the Senate floor to Pat Leahy. He said that Halliburton is a legitimate issue. "It's an issue of accountability."
Devine also said the issue of stem-cell research will likely be addressed.
Devine said that Edwards is prepared to deal with talk of his trial law background, but gave no specifics.
Devine then laid out Edwards' plan to counter the "no foreign policy experience" claim. He said that Cheney was an enormous asset to the ticket four years ago, that he filled in foreign policy void but that Dick Cheney's experience and judgment has not been the best experience for America. In contrast, Edwards' experience in fighting for people, will stand in stark contrast.
We bet that no matter the outcome, we'll hear much the same from both sides in the spin room …
Cheney versus Edwards: the press previews:
Michael Kranish of the Boston Globe delivers a near-must-read preview of what to expect tonight coming out of the debate hall. LINK
"For Cheney, who has been the 'attack dog' of the Bush-Cheney ticket, the debate is an opportunity to portray both John F. Kerry and Edwards as flip-floppers on Iraq. But for Edwards, in what may be the biggest moment of his political career, the opportunity is arguably much greater: He is expected to use the skills he honed in his years as a trial lawyer to try to draw a portrait of Cheney as the ultimate flip-flopper on Iraq and the engineer of what the Democrats say is a failed postwar policy."
The Wall Street Journal 's Shailagh Murray and Greg Hitt have a nice debate preview rife with fabulous descriptions of the two candidates, including that Edwards "looks young enough to be Mr. Cheney's son." The duo also Note that Edwards has never debated one-on-one on TV.
The San Francisco Chronicle's Marc Sandalow takes a look at the "Darth Vader versus Robin" matchup (as one New York columnist has called it). LINK
USA Today 's Bill Nichols writes that this could be the first time the veep debate has ever mattered. LINK
Bob Novak reminisces about the first Mondale-Dole debate of 1976 and asserts that "second-place debates held since then have been largely irrelevant and really not very necessary — and that includes tonight's [debate]." LINK
Nichols and Kasindorf write in USA Today that "advisers underline that Edwards has an advantage Lieberman did not have: Cheney now has a nearly four-year record that he'll have to defend." LINK
The Washington Times ' James Lakely Notes The Note Noting tonight's events have been "dubbed the 'Shrek vs. Breck' debate" and both campaign acknowledge it will have more "importance" than usual. LINK
The way the Washington Times ' Ralph Z. Hallow sees it, John Edwards knows that Dick Cheney is no John Nance Garner, a man who "is said to have denigrated the largely ceremonial office he held as not being worth 'a warm bucket of spit.'"
"Beyond dispute, political observers say, is that Mr. Cheney is the latest in a recent series of vice presidents who, beginning with Walter Mondale in 1977, have an office in the White House West Wing a few steps from the Oval Office and get time with their boss more or less whenever they want it. That gives them at least the potential for power and influence. The rest is up to them." LINK
The Chicago Tribune's Swanson and Zeleny profile Cheney and Edwards, respectively. LINK and LINK
Dick Polman of the Philadelphia Inquirer paints a clear picture of the expectations going into tonight's veep debate and how the campaigns expect to exceed them all. LINK
Cheney and Edwards will go to Florida (not together) after their debate. LINK
Knight Ridder's James Kuhnhenn offers preemptive fact checking of both men. LINK
Cheney versus Edwards: Cheney:
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