Cheney is an excellent speaker, though he lost his trademark composure when he tried to nail Edwards on his Senatorial attendance. Why didn't Edwards respond? Was he too stunned that Cheney so baldly lied? Or did he feel he wouldn't gain had he called him on it? Who knows?

Edwards didn't embarrass himself, and that's basically the most Kerry could have asked from him. Now back to the more important debates: between Bush and Kerry.

"Cheney got our domain name wrong -- calling us "FactCheck.com" -- and wrongly implied that we had rebutted allegations Edwards was making about what Cheney had done as chief executive officer of Halliburton.

In fact, we did post an article pointing out that Cheney hasn't profited personally while in office from Halliburton's Iraq contracts, as falsely implied by a Kerry TV ad. But Edwards was talking about Cheney's responsibility for earlier Halliburton troubles. And in fact, Edwards was mostly right."

Cheney wins

(* The new drinking game is to take a shot every time kerry or edwards says the word plan)

Both men where hard hitting and mostly on mesage. The misinformation on the part of Cheney was countered successfully, I thought, by Edwards simply telling the American people the truth.

All and all I think both men did well but I liked Edwards better.

Cheney pretty clearly won it; he was clearly ready for this one. Edwards was disappointing; for a guy who was supposed to be one of the greatest trial lawyers of this generation he sure had trouble debating. I think the rules hurt him; it would have been nice if they'd tossed all these idiotic "one pencil no notecards one glass of water (37.2 oz, 69.4F)" and just had a good ol' fashioned, talk until the issue is hammered down debate.

One thing I like about Cheney: He speaks in cogent, concise sentences that don't sound like the talking points they are. Unless Dubya can learn to do that in these next two debates, he's going to be in a heap of trouble.