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Cheney's fading credibility

By Thomas Oliphant, Globe Columnist / October 7, 2004

THE BIG moment, like so many Dick Cheney moments in recent years, turned out to be a flat-out falsehood.

From the audience, I could sense that after a poor, defensive start, the once-steady and reassuring vice president, who threw his credibility into the trash can during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, was building to a memorized zinger from his Wyoming practice sessions because he was using uncharacteristically political language and completely dodging the issue presented in the debate's ninth question - about the endless Palestinian-Israeli conflict.

After John Edwards had demonstrated his command of the issue in his own response, Cheney responded by attacking, of all things, Edwards's attendance record in the Senate, reciting his handlers' catchy name for him, Senator Gone, and then, after a dramatic pause, concluding: ''The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight.''

Off camera, Cheney grinned smugly in self-congratulation.

Today, however, he is explaining all the occasions in and out of the Senate when the two were in fact together - many of them recited with great glee to a cheering crowd by Elizabeth Edwards at a post-debate rally. The great, planned moment for Cheney turned out to be on a par with weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Hussein's nonrole in the 9/11 attacks, Iraq's nonties to Iraq, and the millions of Iraqis waiting to welcome the invading Americans.

Cheney's falsehood was in total contrast to the counter-attack Edwards used after the vice president's defining moment had passed. If you want to talk records, he obliged by listing some of Cheney's most bizarre decisions as a member of the House of Representatives: one of 10 members (out of 435) to vote against Head Start, one of four to oppose banning plastic weapons designed to fool metal detectors, against money for the Meals on Wheels program for senior citizens, against a federal holiday honoring Martin Luther King, and against a resolution calling for the release of then-imprisoned Nelson Mandela.

The reason behind Cheney's dramatic misstatement of an easily verifiable fact is revealing. It helps explain why Cheney's performance overall may have been helpful to George Bush in its appeal to already rabid Republicans, but why Edwards's was more helpful to John Kerry in its stronger appeal to the undecided or still-persuadable.

In the preceding exchange Edwards had the temerity to raise the issue that drives Cheney nuts - Halliburton, the continuously in-trouble conglomerate Cheney used to run and still gets lucrative deferred compensation from.

Unlike Cheney, Edwards is not spending today explaining any falsehoods.

Despite the desires by some Democrats for a Halliburton festival in the debate, Edwards brought it up only twice, each time as a counter-attack. And each time he displayed the attention to detail that used to characterize Cheney until he took office.

The first mention followed another memorized zinger from Cheney. This one concerned last year's famous $87 billion appropriation to partially fund the escalating costs of the mess in Iraq. Out of the blue, Cheney claimed to have discovered that the only reason Edwards and Kerry voted against the final version of the measure was because Howard Dean was doing well in the polls at the time.

Edwards cited more specific, and verifiable concerns. One of them happened to be the fact that nearly half the $20 billion portion of the bill targeted for ''reconstruction'' was a $7.5 billion, no-bid contract for Halliburton.

The second mention came in response to a fudged Cheney answer to a question from moderator Gwen Ifill noting his opposition while he was Halliburton CEO to US sanctions against terrorism-supporting, nuclear weapons-developing Iran.

Cheney fudged the issue by ''explaining'' that his opposition was to unilateral sanctions, not the current, international penalties Iran faces that may even be increased. That answer failed to note that as CEO Cheney made no such distinction in his crusade against policies that restricted Halliburton's international business.

Edwards took advantage of the opening. He said he and Kerry opposed the current, no-bid, problem-plagued deal with Halliburton for several reasons. He said that for accounting practices while Cheney was CEO the company paid millions of dollars in fines. That is accurate ($7.5 million to be precise).

Edwards said that the company did business with Libya and Iran while they were ''sworn enemies'' of the United States. That is accurate.

He said Halliburton is under federal investigation for allegedly bribing foreign officials during that period. That is accurate.

And he said that Halliburton has been granted a highly unusual exemption from the normal practice of withholding partial payment under existing contracts to companies that are under formal investigation. That is also accurate.

I am always diligent about disclosing the fact that my daughter works for the Kerry-Edwards campaign, but for five years before she made that career move I had noticed something about John Edwards that is much more relevant to Tuesday evening's debate. In all my dealings with him since he ran for the Senate in 1998, I have never once had to begin a paragraph with those damning words: Edwards later explained.

As he was famously while a lawyer, he is fanatically meticulous in his preparation and research into issues. That, much more than his sunny disposition, is why he so clearly belonged on that stage here.

I haven't the slightest idea which ticket will win next month, but Edwards helped Kerry far more than Cheney helped Bush in their debate here.

Thomas Oliphant's e-mail address is [e-mail].

© Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

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