10/06/00 9:10 a.m.
A Man in Full
Cheney rules.

Robert A. George is an editorial page writer
for the New York Post------------------------------------RAGGEDmail@aol.com

.K., this columnist hereby willingly eats the crow he dished out following the selection of Dick Cheney as George W. Bush's running mate. Cheney is clearly the most adult, best-prepared, most confident, and least affected of all four men we've seen in the debates so far. In fact, is it too late to flip the tickets?

Cheney explained more coherently what the Republican philosophy and platform is all about in the first five minutes of yesterday's debate than George W. Bush did in all of Tuesday's presidential debate. He succeeded because he smartly came into this venue with a basic theme: Less taxes mean more freedom; more taxes — and the bureaucracies they fund — mean less freedom. Most of his answers came from that basic premise, whether a question directly pertained to taxes or not. When asked about the "equal pay for equal work" issue (a bogus one that Bernard Shaw should have scrapped), Cheney turned it around to a question of family resources and the bias of the Gore plan against stay-at-home moms. [Quick aside: Shaw has completely wasted any good-feeling Republicans might have toward him because of his one-question evisceration of Michael Dukakis in 1988. His performance Thursday was pretentious and overbearing in the extreme. The racial profiling question was — even if one is liberal on the issue — one of the worst asked in a political debate.]

Following a lengthy and ponderous Lieberman explanation of Gore's various tax plans, Cheney, quipped, "Bernie, you have to be a CPA to understand what he just said. The fact of the matter is that the plan is so complex that an ordinary American's never going to be able to figure out what they even qualify for."

Cheney then simply contrasted the coercive nature of Democrat tax policy versus the basic simplicity of the Republican approach. Perfect.

Joe Lieberman didn't lose this debate. Cheney won it fair and square.

While Lieberman's affectations could be grating, he was no where near as arrogant or boorish as Al Gore (but then again, who could be?). Yes, there were the Democratic party distortions and basic liberal class warfare, but there was none of the out-and-out lying that has become part of Pinocchio Al's stock-in-trade. Well, except for, "I have not changed a single position since Al Gore nominated me to be his vice president."

But Lieberman did not defend Gore as well as he could have (shades of Gore's performance against Dan Quayle eight years ago). Most notably, two-thirds of the way through, Cheney lashed into the administration's failures with respect to Social Security and Medicare. He even pointed to the Breaux Commission's recommendations which Clinton and Gore blew off. The reliable running-mate demagogic response would have been that the Democrats couldn't reform Medicare because Republicans were trying to cut the program to give huge tax cuts to the rich (see Democrat talking points circa 1995-96). But Lieberman ignored the question to go for a generic "things are better than they were eight years ago." Cheney clearly got the better of the exchange.

Cheney's was so cool and collected that he sailed through one area where he could have been somewhat vulnerable — defending Bush's energy policy. He articulated well why opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve could be done without damage to the environment. When Bernie Shaw tried to pull a "Gotcha!" by pointing out Cheney's support for environmental preservation in Wyoming, Cheney turned it around, first joking, "I have a balanced approach when it comes to these issues." A good, quick response. But then, he didn't back away from his record; he embraced it and used it as a good example of basic GOP policy balancing environmental and energy concerns. By contrast, Lieberman's response that "technology" would resolve energy problems was quite weak. Lieberman said he doesn't support drilling in ANWR because the oil couldn't be produced for 6-7 years. How quickly would cars be developed that might attain the extra three-miles-per-gallon that Lieberman supposes would help resolve the energy crisis?

Cheney, of course, made the case for building up the military. But, he also ably connected Mideast peace to the end of the Cold War. In speaking of foreign policy, he got closest to what could be considered a "personal" dig at Gore. "I think it's very important that we have an administration where we have a president with firm leadership, who has the kind of track record of dealing straight with people, of keeping his word, so that friends and allies both respect us and our adversaries fear us." But Cheney's manner was so straightforward that it didn't seem harsh at all. Lieberman didn't even refer back to it.

Remarkably, he even bested Lieberman in the area of one-liners. For one moment, it was like a tennis match. Lieberman zinging Cheney with "you're better off than you were eight years ago, too." Cheney coming back with "the government had nothing to do with it." Lieberman joked about Hadassah wanting him in the private sector; Cheney coming back with the winner: "Well, I'm going to try to help you do that, Joe." No it's not high political rhetoric, but a perfect exchange for the talk show culture which has guided politics this year. And Cheney came out on top.

It is interesting that the lack of hard-edged rhetoric from either men Thursday night means that something of a flip in the tickets has actually occurred. The presidential candidates are now the ones who will be their own hatchet-men. This is something that comes naturally to Al Gore. Whether George W. Bush will return such fire is open to question.

Conservatives might be uncomfortable with Cheney's responses on RU-486 and gay rights. On the former, he suggested that there was nothing that a President Bush could do to overturn the FDA's ruling. That is in line with George W.'s response Tuesday, but the truth is that a Republican FDA commissioner probably has wide latitude. As every conservative knows — the strongest power is to regulate. Bernie Shaw's question on gay rights was clearly meant to elicit a comment from Cheney on his gay daughter. To his credit, Cheney refused to take the bait and bring his family into the answer (imagine how Gore would have responded). Instead, he seemed to say that this needed to be an issue for the states to decide. "I don't think there should necessarily be a federal policy in this area." Well, what does that say for the Defense of Marriage Act? What does that say about Vermont's civil unions?

But in light of his overall performance, this is a minor point. Dick Cheney proved why he belonged on the Republican ticket Thursday night. The cliché is that he gives Bush "gravitas." He's done more than that now. He may very well have become the rocket booster to elevate this ticket into the stratosphere.

Can we have another V.P. debate? Please?