Quotes of the Day

It was one of the most powerful moments of the debate. Dick Cheney listed the many votes John Edwards missed in the Senate and, like a school proctor, chided him for his unimpressive performance. The knuckle wrapping was punctuated with a final blow as Cheney noted that in all his visits to the Senate, the two had never met before that evening on stage.

Except it wasn't true. When Elizabeth Edwards joined her husband at the lectern afterwards she pointed out to the Vice President that they had met before. Three times.

In a debate that centered around credibility, it didn't help the Vice President who had come across as so stern and steady to get caught in an inaccuracy. Sure, the meetup mishap was a small detail, but when the Administration is on the defensive about distorting pre-war and post-war intelligence once offered with the same stern and steady aspect, the slip-up was a symbolic groaner.

And yet the point still stands. John Kerry and John Edwards have a record in the Senate that they are not anxious to talk about, and the Bush campaign was delighted that the Vice President shifted the debate back to something beyond Kerry's more compelling performance last week in his debate against President Bush. "What you didn?t hear was deafening," said Bush Campaign Manager Ken Mehlman. "The fact that one of the best advocates couldn't defend the nominee on taxes and Iraq is a problem." A campaign official standing nearby as Mehlman circled through that line of argument again and again said: "that's probably our best line of the night." True enough, talking points from the campaign emailed at 3 a.m. followed this attack.

The Kerry campaign was delighted that Cheney made the factual slip-up. It supported the narrative they had been pushing all night that the Bush administration didn't want to answer the tough questions about Iraq or doctored the evidence when pressed to.

Kerry's campaign was helped by the fact that this was the Bush Administration's second debate of the day. Tuesday morning the Washington Post reported that former Iraqi administrator Paul Bemmer said that the U.S. had not sent enough troops during the early days of the conflict and that the shortfall had lead to the sense of lawlessness that now rules portions of the country. The Pentagon and the Bush campaign shot back that the military commanders made those judgments and that Bremer only asked for more troops at the very end. Bremer put out a statement wholeheartedly backing the President's re-election and the Iraq war, but that didn't erase the fact that his initial comments sounded like he was reading the Kerry talking points. Those close to Bremer have said that he does not want to be Secretary of State in a Second Bush administration. He may get his wish.

Bremer's remarks were particularly unhelpful on the day that the man who promised U.S. troops would be greeted as liberators was at the debating round table. Donald Rumsfeld also had views. There was no connection between Al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, said the Secretary of Defense, who seemed to agree with a new CIA report that contradicts another key Cheney assessment about the link. Cheney worked hard to bring his claims back into context and explain the al-Qaeda connections to Saddam, but when he said that he had never linked Saddam to 9/11, the Kerry campaign was ready to pounce. Cheney never did make the link between that attack and Saddam — he always talked about links to al-Qaeda, not 9/11 — but he did everything short of it and the challenger's campaign had a fact sheet of several damning Cheney statements dished out to reporters in a flash.

In the end, both sides got what they wanted from the vice presidential debate. Edwards came out on the attack and the Vice President didn't give an inch. Edwards didn't seem too shrill and Cheney's answers were more complete than George Bush's had been. Despite the spin from the Democrats, he looked measured and calm — perhaps even a little low on the blood pressure guage — but more reasonable and less impetuous than his cartoon. It was a split evening. Even the instant polls were mixed. CBS showed Edwards up and ABC's poll showed the Vice President the winner. Each campaign was emailing reporters excerpts from the same pundits-on-the-spot, choosing different lines that seemed to favor their candidates.

In the unreal post-debate world, partisans for both candidates come at you churning a conveyer of talking points, trailed by staffers carrying large placards bearing their names. They desperately want to know whom you thought carried the evening. So, if forced under that pressure, one would probably have to say the Bush team won by a hair.

Here's why. The President's performance last week has grown drearier as the days have passed. Republicans have inched out of the woodwork to say increasingly more harsh things since last week about Bush's performance, and even the campaign has now come close to admitting that Bush's showing was a disappointment. Tonight may have stopped the negative coverage or at least interrupted it. "Cheney stopped their momentum and that's a big enough win," said a senior campaign aide. The Bush team's hope is that tomorrow the president will take the next step as he gives a retooled speech about the war on terror and the economy in the hopes of putting the choices in this election in high relief.

Now for St. Louis. The next big moment will come in Friday's debate where real voters will get to ask questions. Bush will have a chance to repeal the image of himself as an irritable Commander in Chief who doesn't like to be questioned, an image Democrats were still trying to stoke tonight. "He looked like George Bush. He looked aghast and annoyed," said Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe, trying to paint Cheney with the same brush they used so effectively on Bush. "This is not a birthright for Dick Cheney or George Bush. They have to answer questions."

Bush will have learned his lesson by Friday's debate. It took his top aides some time after the first debate to convince him he looked annoyed. Karen Hughes, who probably has more weight with him than any of his top staff, took some pains to make him come around, but finally got the point across. Bush will probably make fun of his smirk Friday night and try to turn his public sour puss to his favor. Whatever he does, he's been told to smile, even if the questioners at the second debate insult his mother.

If you want a preview of some of the lines Bush will try out, just listen to his speech on Wednesday. One of the ways that the Bush team prepares their boss is to write new lines into his stump speech. If he's comfortable with them in shirtsleeves, they know he'll be ready to use them in the highly stylized debate setting. They've been working lines in for the last several days.

The Bush team has taken other lessons from the first debate. His communications team flew out on a chartered plane Tuesday evening. They'll be on the phones spinning again Wednesday, not fighting at the car rental counters the way they were after last week's debate. On their home turf they're also feeling better: their internal polls show that despite Kerry's positive debate reviews, Bush is still ahead among voters by 4-6 points. The rolling ABC/Washington Post poll, which will be updated each day until the election, also shows a similar result. The Kerry team of course cites their own poll numbers, which show their candidate surging.

Later in the evening, after advisers for both campaigns had stopped spinning and retired for a nightcap, the Blackberry messages were more measured than the high-pressure points made in spin alley. "I think they both did alright," said one Democratic partisan. "They did fine. Who knows." Said a Bush adviser: "People probably couldn't help but wonder if the wrong guys are at the top of the ticket. It was a good debate."

• John F. Dickerson
• Edwards and Cheney trade punches in their vice presidential debate