Cheney, Lieberman To Debate Tonight

W A S H I N G T O N, Oct. 5, 2000 -- — With the men at the top of the presidential tickets locked in a statistical dead heat, Republican Dick Cheney and Democrat Joseph Lieberman square off tonight in their first and only debate of the 2000 campaign.

Just 48 hours after watching their running mates — George W. Bush and Al Gore, respectively — take stands in the first of three presidential debates, the No. 2 candidates will debate at Centre College in tiny Danville, Ky.

“I’m really looking forward to it,” Cheney, a former defense secretary and congressman from Wyoming, said on ABCNEWS’ Nightline Wednesday. “I’m sure Joe is, too … Neither one of us has ever participated in debates at this level before.”

“I don’t know him real well,” Lieberman, a senator from Connecticut, said of his opponent. “He’s a good man. I just think he has some bad ideas — he and George [W.] Bush — for our nation’s future. And I think it will be a good, healthy debate.”

Bush will be watching the debate from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and Gore will watch from Lake Buena Vista, Fla. Publicly, Bush has offered no advice to his running mate on the debate. Cheney arguably has more debate experience than Bush: he helped Presidents Ford and Reagan prepare for their campaign debates. But ABCNEWS political director Mark Halperin said Cheney’s the one who needs to prove himself.

“On paper, Joe Lieberman has an advantage going into this event. He’s an experienced debater from his years in the Senate up until this day … Dick Cheney, out of public life for a while, never has been in a debate at this level. The trick for him will [be] to show some of his human side,” Halperin said.

Lieberman slept late this morning and Cheney is feeling relaxed today, their wives told Good Morning America. Both are, personally, low-key people. But they’ve spent weeks preparing for the 90-minute debate, getting in a final round of practice Wednesday.

Cheney sparred in a full-length mock debate with Ohio Rep. Robert Portman, the Bush camp’s stand-in for Lieberman, in Washington. Lieberman spent the day in Richmond, Ky., getting in one last rehearsal with attorney Bob Barnett, who has been playing the role of his Republican rival in their practice sessions.

“My piece of advice that I gave him after his practice debate was, ‘The best thing you have, Joe, is yourself. Just be yourself,’” Hadassah Lieberman told Good Morning America.

The format for today’s event will be less formal than Tuesday’s presidential debate, where the two candidates stood behind lecterns. Rather, Lieberman and Cheney will be seated at a table with the debate moderator, CNN’s Bernard Shaw. The candidates will be allowed two minutes to respond to each of Shaw’s questions.

Advisers involved in Lieberman’s debate preparation said in light of the format, they deliberately avoided “over-programming” the candidate with policy specifics so that he will appear natural and comfortable.

The second Bush-Gore debate, scheduled for Oct. 11 in Winston-Salem, N.C., will feature a similar talk-show format. The third and final presidential debate is set for Oct. 17 in St. Louis and will feature a town hall meeting setting. During negotiations with the Gore campaign and the Commission on Presidential Debates, Bush officials lobbied for the use of less formal debate formats.

Focus on Issues

In their first face-off, Gore and Bush focused largely on the defining issues of the election: Education, tax relief, prescription drugs, military readiness and energy policy. Their running mates will likely follow suit.

In recent weeks, however, the candidates have increasingly assumed the “attack dog” role traditionally played by vice-presidential candidates. Cheney has saved his best barbs for the man at the top of the Democratic ticket.

“Al Gore has described these presidential debates as a job interview with the American people,” Cheney said Wednesday. “I’ve learned over the years that when somebody embellishes their resume in a job interview, you don’t hire them.”

Lieberman, on the other hand, has been attacking both Bush and Cheney. The Connecticut senator is expected to continue highlighting Cheney’s conservative record in an effort to paint him as a right-wing extremist, a strategy employed by the Gore campaign from the day Cheney was tapped to fill out the GOP ticket. On the stump, Lieberman has often pointed out that his counterpart cast numerous votes against funding for the Head Start early childhood education and school lunch programs.

“Joe Lieberman wants to focus in on Cheney and Bush, paint them as two guys who are conservative who are trying to hide from their conservative voting record,” Halperin said. “Dick Cheney wants to re-enforce the Republican themes: you can’t trust Al Gore to tell the truth … and that Al Gore and Joe Lieberman favor big government solutions where they would say Cheney and Bush favor letting people be empowered.”

Cheney will also likely try to exploit differences between Gore and Lieberman. The vice president has railed against school vouchers, for example, but Lieberman once supported them. And, while Lieberman was the first Democrat to take to the Senate floor in 1998 to criticize President Clinton for his conduct in the Monica Lewinsky affair, Gore stood by the president.

Great Expectations?

Vice-presidential debates have often made for lively confrontations, such as a memorable exchange between Republican Dan Quayle and Democrat Lloyd Bentsen in 1988, in which Bentsen told his opponent, “You are no Jack Kennedy.”

Lieberman said Wednesday that he will be on the lookout for surprises, not from his opponent, but from the moderator.

“There’s always a potential for surprise,” he told reporters in Richmond this afternoon. “Bernard Shaw has a reputation for this — he’ll surprise you a with a question and you just got to be who you are.”

In 1988, Shaw asked Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis if he would want the death penalty to apply to a man who had raped and murdered his wife Kitty. Dukakis was skewered for giving a flat, unemotional response to the pointed question.

Public opinion polls show that presidential debates tend to reinforce, not change, voters’ existing perceptions about the candidates. The same can be said about vice-presidential forums. Surveys also indicate that the selection of running mates rarely changes voters’ minds. It also is highly unlikely that tonight’s event will prove decisive in the campaign.

Nevertheless, both candidates will take the stage knowing their every misstep will be amplified by a massive media presence. Cheney is a former oil man and Lieberman a lawyer, but both will likely adhere to the physician’s dictum: “First, do no harm.”

ABCNEWS’ Eileen McMenamin and Yoruba Richen contributed to this report.