October 06, 2004
The VP Debate
The conventional wisdom is that the VP debate has little impact on the election outcome, and this will probably be repeated that much more often with it being the Republican candidate who gives the better impression. Milwaukee talk radio host Charlie Sykes suggested that the major impact would be on the relative morale of the party base.
There is something very important to be learned about a presidential candidate by his choice of his team. My wee wifey picked up an aphorism somewhere that "a first rate leader picks a first rate team; a second rate leader picks a third rate team." One can debate whether Karl Rove is truly an evil genius but I can't imagine anyone claiming he is less competent than Terry McAuliffe. One can complain about Colin Powell having sipped at the Foggy Bottom "agreement head of everything" Koolaid, but again, nobody can criticize hos competence. Kerry's campaign team is so out of touch that they never considered the possibility his past would be questioned. When they denied that he had ever mentioned "Christmas in Cambodia" it showed that nobody had even bothered to look at Kerry's record.
The importance of the VP debate is that it shows the type of choices the two candidates make. How could anyone pick as our nation's Chief Executive, the Commander in Chief of our armed forces in a time of war, a man who would choose as his running mate someone who would bring a dirty clock to his single most important appearance?
Posted by triticale at October 6, 2004 08:32 PM