ROGER SIMON COLUMN
NOVEMBER 1, 2004

WASHINGTON - - They are tired. They are very tired. The candidates for president are so
tired that they scarcely make sense sometimes. (You may have noticed this.)

They barely know where they are. And where are they? Lambert Field?

They are fighting colds and coughs. The rear deck of their limousines are
usually cluttered with cold remedies, nasal sprays, cough drops and tissues. They give three, four or even five speeches a day and the media insist that they show "fire in the belly" each time, which means they have to shout.

So as one of the longest presidential campaigns in history reaches its closing hours, are the two leading candidates asking themselves, "Is this what we spent $1.2 billion on?"

You bet they aren't!

By now they have drunk their own Kool-Aid. More than anything, more than in mom or in apple pie, candidates for president must believe in themselves. A sliver of self-doubt, a smidgen of human weakness, can derail a campaign.

So each candidate has convinced himself that his election is critical - - vital! - - to the survival of the Republic as we know it. How can they actually believe this? Easy: the crowds tell them so.

Like Antaeus who drew his strength from the ground, candidates draw their strength from the crowds. No matter that the crowds are almost always partisan, carefully assembled, and rigidly screened. It is the roar that counts. Not even presidents are immune.

"I don't pay that much attention to the polls," says George W. Bush. "I feed off the crowds and our crowds are very big and very enthusiastic."

To believe more in the applause than in the polls, that is a sign of self-assurance. Or self-delusion. Only time will tell.

Where the candidates now go and what they now say is no longer up to them (if it ever was.) They both have "strategy groups" who, using the most sophisticated of polling data and media market information, plan every trip and every speech for maximum impact. (The time and energy it takes to put together a presidential campaign speech is incredible. It must be a perfect TV show. But often that time and energy can be put to better use, like going door to door and asking people if they intend to vote.)

Does the candidate speak to the base today or to the undecideds? Which group will determine the outcome? And who are these undecided voters anyway? And why
are they still undecided? Where have they been living for the last year? Under a rock?

Is there anything left to ask these candidates? No, but they are asked anyway. Bush is asked by a reporter if, in his mind, both Christians and non-Christians go to heaven, surely one of the more pivotal issues of campaign 2004.

"Yes they do," the president replies. "We have different routes of getting there. But I want you to understand, I want your listeners to understand, I don't get to decide who goes to Heaven. The Almighty God decides who goes to Heaven."

Is that clear? Is anybody still confused about that?

John Kerry does in the final days what all tired politicians do: He screws up a punchline. For months, Kerry has been criticizing those "politicians who talk about family values but don't value families!" But in Green Bay, Wisc., Kerry says, "Are you ready for mainstream values where politicians don't just talk about valuing families, but they value families, and do the things we need to do for mainstream values in the White House?"

Uh, right, we get it.

Perhaps because this campaign has been going on for so long, and both candidates are by now so familiar to the public (i.e. old news) both have turned to celebrity surrogates to excite the crowds.

The ultimate marquis names have been wheeled out: Bruce Springsteen for the Democrats and Arnold Schwarzenegger for the Republicans.

Do these surrogates actually change votes? Would someone opposed to George Bush or John Kerry change his mind because Arnold Schwarzenegger or Bruce Springsteen told him to?

Maybe the talking heads will tell us. They tell us everything else.

Among the media, everything has been said, but not everyone has said it. And so they drone on, forgetting Edward R. Murrow's admonition: "Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world, doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar."

It is said this election will be over some day. Hope springs eternal. Or perhaps it will be too close to call. Or go to the Electoral College. Or to the House of Representatives. Or be tied up in the courts. Name your poison.

Of the polls, the less said the better. Since we have never been polled and we don't know anybody who has ever been polled, we assume they are all made up. But one poll result is too delicious to pass up.

In a recently released Gallup Poll, respondents were asked whether George W. Bush was a uniter or divider. The result: 48 percent said he was a uniter and 48 percent said he was a divider. Think about it.

It is time to wrestle with the better angels of your nature. It is time to examine the candidates, their issues, their pasts, their promises. Give it thought. Make an informed choice.

And take comfort in the immortal words of Adlai Stevenson, who said, "In America, anyone can become president. It's one of the risks you take."

ROGER SIMON COLUMN
OCTOBER 27, 2004

WASHINGTON - - It was back in 1991 after we had won the Persian Gulf war and George H.W. Bush’s approval ratings were in the stratosphere that I first heard from Corey Ruzicka.

He called to tell me that Bush would lose re-election and a semi-obscure politician named Bill Clinton would win.

Ruzicka, who today is an advertising executive living in Arlington, Texas, is almost never wrong about his presidential predictions even though he does no polling, conducts no focus groups and talks to not a single voter.

How does Ruzicka do it? Easy. He looks at the last letter of the last name of each candidate.

"Clinton is going to win," Ruzicka told me back then, "because his name ends in N. Of America's 51 presidential elections, 22 of them have been won by the candidate whose last name ended in N. Would you like me to name the N-enders who won?"

Not really, I said.

"Washington, Van Buren, Buchanan, William Henry Harrison, Benjamin Harrison, Reagan…” Ruzicka began.

Are these in order? I asked.

"No," Ruzicka said. "Jefferson, Lyndon Johnson, Lincoln, Madison, Jackson . . ."

Michael Jackson was never president! I said. You are making this up!

"Not Michael Jackson, Andrew Jackson," Ruzicka said. "Can I go on?”

Would it do any good if I said no? I said.

"Nixon, Wilson and Truman," Ruzicka said. "Only two times in history have we had major presidential nominees whose name ended in H, and each time the economy has gone to hell. Al Smith was the Democratic presidential nominee in 1928, and the country then faced the 1929 Depression."

But Al Smith lost the presidential race, I said.

"Doesn't matter," Ruzicka said. "His name ended in H."

So who's the other H?

"George H. W. Bush," Ruzicka said. "As soon as Bush was nominated I knew the economy would go bad. Everyone thought I was nuts because the economy was robust. But I was right."

In July, 2000, I called Ruzicka and asked who was going to win: George W. Bush or Al Gore.

And he gave a tiny edge to Gore. “When we have had candidates whose name ends in an E, they have had four wins and eight losses,” Ruzicka said. “When we have had candidates whose name ends in H, they have had one win and two losses.”

And since Gore won the popular vote, you can say Ruzicka was correct.

According to Ruzicka, the last letter of the vice president’s name also has a lot to do with things. “Whenever we have a Y- or L-ending winning or losing presidential or vice presidential candidate, we have a major war with casualties within four years,” he said.

I printed that and, sure enough, Dick Cheney got elected vice president and we went to war in Iraq, the curse of the Y-enders. (The economy also turned bad, the curse of the H-enders.)

So who will win this time, I asked Ruzicka recently.

“This is the toughest election I ever predicted,” he said. “I’ve got Bush winning, but by a hair. Y-enders (as in John Kerry) are 3 wins and 9 losses since George Washington and H-enders are now two and two now. But we have never re-elected a Y-ending vice president.”

“Regardless of who wins we will be in Iraq for the next 4 years, because Cheney ends in Y and Kerry ends in Y,” Ruzicka went on. “There will be more terrorism around the world and North Korea will heat up because of the Y.”

Ruzicka said 2008 would be better because both Hillary Clinton and John McCain have N-ending names and N-enders are always popular.

Swell, I said. But why do Americans like people whose names end in N?

"Your name ends in N," Ruzicka said.

Good point, I said.

ROGER SIMON COLUMN
OCTOBER 25, 2004

WASHINGTON - - Four years ago, the overriding issue in the presidential election was how to let the good times roll: There were large government surpluses and more were projected.

Fixing Social Security, increasing health care benefits, improving education and cleaning up the environment all seemed like good ideas at the time.

Homeland security? The phrase did not exist. Terrorism? That mostly happened someplace else. Iraq? Was that the one next to Iran?

But the ground beneath this year’s presidential election has, to put it mildly, shifted. “This election fundamentally is about the safety of our children, our streets, our air space,” said Ken Duberstein, a former Ronald Reagan chief of staff with close ties to the current administration. “We know this will be a ‘long, twilight struggle’ and that is why this election is about the war on terror and not the economy, why it’s about security - - personal security - - and not clean drinking water or the environment. This year it’s not the economy, stupid, it’s terrorism and homeland security, stupid.”

The media have, in the final days of this campaign, decided that this election is uniquely about “fear.”

But, in fact, presidential campaigns almost always are: Vote for Barry Goldwater and he will plunge the nation into a thermonuclear war that will incinerate little girls innocently plucking the petals off daisies. Vote for Michael Dukakis and he will release dangerous murderers from prison who will invade our homes to rape and torture us. Vote for Bob Dole and risk the end of Social Security. Vote for Al Gore, George W. Bush said in 2000, and he will leave this nation “trillions in debt.” (And, just as the old joke goes, people voted for Al Gore and today we are trillions in debt. About $7.4 trillion, in fact, an increase of $1.8 trillion since 2000. )

But there is something different about the fear campaign this time around. Something that makes it scarier and, therefore, more potent as a political tool: The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 have left legacy, a specter, and it is the specter of our own deaths and the deaths of our loved ones.

And if the 2004 campaign has become about anything, it has become about actual survival, about worrying whether we, our spouses, our children, our parents will return home at the end of the day.

“Since 9/11, we live on a different planet,” a senior Kerry adviser told me. “Our lives have been profoundly changed forever. And this is the first time that feeling will be expressed at the ballot box.”

A psychologist, Mary Margaret Frederick, whose home and practice are four blocks from where the twin towers of the World Trade Center stood in Manhattan, has a more chilling outlook. “In the 25 years since I started working in mental health, I have never experienced the intensity of focused fear on the outcome of an election as I am experiencing this year,” she said.

She admits that that most of her patients are “left-leaning Democrats” so their dislike of George Bush is hardly surprising. What is surprising, however, is the depth of their feeling.

“Many of my patients are as afraid of having another four years of a Bush presidency as they are of the terrorists,” she said. “And they are very, very afraid. Some are having a recurrence of the textbook symptoms of anxiety and depression that they experienced after 9/11. Some are suffering from near paralysis in their everyday lives as the election draws closer.”

Working against this, Republicans insist, is George W. Bush’s trump card: his natural, easy-going likeability. It may not appeal to Democrats, they say, but it will appeal to enough persuadable voters to carry the day.

“Americans want to like their presidents,” Duberstein said. “Ronald Reagan was likeable. Bill Clinton was a likeable rogue. People may agree viscerally with what Kerry is saying, but they don’t want him in their bedroom when they are watching the 11 o’clock news. He fails the bedroom test.”

Yet, even likeability has it limits. And Iraq may be testing that limit. Walter Lippman once wrote that the “acid test” of a foreign policy is whether it unites the American people. By this standard, the Bush foreign policy in Iraq has been far from a success, not just with Democrats, but with members of his own party.

“Iraq was a mistake,” said Richard Viguerie, a veteran conservative activist whose direct mail fundraising efforts have helped elect Republicans for decades. “It took our eye off of bin Laden and Al Qaeda….In some ways, the Democrats have a point there.”

Said Paul Weyrich, a central figure in the American conservative movement, “I wish [Bush] well and admire his courage. But I’m not convinced this is going to work.”

Yet few Democratic activists are making any confident predictions for victory in the last days of the election. “Bush’s low favorability ratings, especially in the battleground states, suggests to me we should win,” said one senior Kerry adviser, “but if we don’t win, it was the power of the war card and the power of fear.”

More than 70 years ago, Franklin Roosevelt told the American people “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” This year, fear itself is plenty.

ROGER SIMON COLUMN
OCTOBER 18, 2004

Simon Says:

The greatest nation on earth cannot secure enough flu vaccine for its population? What is happening here?

If you say you never swiped anything off a maid's cart, I say I don't believe you.

If the winner on Nov. 2 gets - - as is very common - - a large Electoral College victory, will the media rethink their obsession with “battleground” states? Naw.

And one thing that obsession will do, I predict, is suppress the vote in non-battleground states. If you live in the South (except for Florida), New York, California, Texas, Indiana, etc. the media have told you there is little point in your voting because you don’t live in a “battleground.”

For all the outrage over John Kerry's mention of Mary Cheney in the final presidential debate, I didn't hear a single Republican spinner mention it immediately afterwards.

Even though Kerry is using it as a scare tactic, there is no chance Congress would approve a draft in the next four years. (Unless there was a direct threat to the security of the United States, like an invasion by Canada, for instance.)

I never thought I'd say this about a Dodge, but the Magnum is kind of cool looking.

Always check your credit card bill carefully. Hotels love to sneak phony “minibar” charges on your card long after you checked out.

If you can name Ralph Nader's running mate, you may be following politics a too closely.

Why do dry cleaners always refer to your clothes as “garments”?

Don't let the celebrity TV shows fool you: Texas Hold 'Em is an amazingly dull form of poker.

Does anybody know why baseball players spit so much? Athletes in other sports seem to be able to go 10 minutes or more without spitting. Baseball players seem unable to do this. But they should remember the immortal words of Adlai Stevenson, who said: “If you expect to rate, don't expectorate.”(OK, so maybe it wasn’t Adlai Stevenson who said that.)

It is never permissible to dog ear the page of a book. (Dog earring a dog, on the other hand, is OK if the dog likes it.)

If you missed Jon Stewart’s appearance on “Crossfire” last week, you missed one of the wackiest moments in the history of live television.

At what age were you the most attractive? And if you think you haven't reached it yet, you are probably kidding yourself.

ROGER SIMON COLUMN
OCTOBER 11, 2004

WASHINGTON - - George W. Bush was petulant in his first debate and pugnacious in his second. Maybe for his third he ought to try presidential.

Though he did better in his second debate against John Kerry in St. Louis than he did in his first debate at Coral Gables (he could hardly have done worse), I get the feeling these debates are not helping Bush and are helping Kerry.

Bush is paying the price for avoiding many press conferences and for appearing only in front of adoring groups. He is not yet quick enough on his feet and, on occasion, has not been up to the questioning in the debates.

Kerry, on the other hand, no great master on the stump, has been helped enormously by one aspect of the debate format: He must keep his longest answers to two minutes. And, believe me, Kerry is better at two minutes than he is at 40 minutes.

No matter. The Bush campaign team decided early that they would not make the mistake they made after the first debate, when they were very subdued (i.e. honest) over Bush’s poor performance.

Matthew Dowd, George Bush’s chief strategist, was so pleased with his boss’s debate performance in St. Louis at the second debate that he strode into the press area and gave a colleague a high five that rang through the cavernous room like a rifle shot.

There was only one problem: the debate was only 61 minutes old and still had more than 30 minutes to go. And Dowd had to stop watching his boss’s performance in order to go into the press center to celebrate it.

But the spin was that important this time around. Bush had not only lost the first debate in Coral Gables against John Kerry but, more disastrously, Bush lost the press analysis afterwards. So the Bush campaign team decided that for the second debate praising Bush’s importance was more important than actually witnessing Bush’s performance.

Which is why chief Bush guru Karl Rove rushed into the press room while the debate was still going on and a slew of Democrats soon followed in one of the maddest dashes in debate history.

On stage, the two candidates were going at it toe-to-toe and sometimes almost cheek to jowl with neither giving an inch. Not much new ground was covered, but at least each was forceful defending his familiar turf.

Kerry continued to say that Bush promises “you more of the same for the next four years. He rushed to war without a plan to win the peace.” In response, Bush said Kerry’s position on the Iraq war was “naïve and dangerous.”

Bush did make some verbal gaffest, referring to the Internet as “the internets” and referring to Kerry as “Senator Kennedy.” But even some Democrats were forced to admit Bush had improved his debate skills. “He was not a disaster like he was last time.” David Axelrod, a Democratic strategist said.

The battle between the two campaigns actually broke out before the debate began when the debate organizers placed red tape on the red carpeting of the debate stage designating lines the two candidates were not supposed to cross as they wandered about in the town-hall setting. The tape - - jokingly designated as the “Maginot Line” by the Kerry campaign - - did manage to keep the two men from throttling each other.

But the real Kerry strategy is not to stay close to Bush physically, but to stay close in the polls, close enough so that on Election Day they can “kick a field goal” with their get-out-the-vote effort and win. The Republicans, on the other hand, have their own get-out-the-vote effort and both parties have been doing unprecedented amounts of door-knocking and voter outreach.

In 2000, internal Republican polling showed Bush doing four percentage points better than he actually did. The reasons, his strategists say, was an insufficient effort to get Republicans to the polls, a mistake they vow not to repeat. Democrats, on the other hand, say the higher the turn-out, the greater Kerry’s chances, and vow a massive effort in the final days.

While most pollsters say there are very few undecided voters left in this election, Democrats dispute that. One top Kerry adviser told me that the current undecided vote was as high as 15-20 percent of the electorate. Since challengers traditionally get the majority of the undecided vote, this would obviously be good news for Kerry. Republicans dismiss 15-20 percent figure as wishful thinking on the part of the Kerry campaign.

The Bush policy on Iraq, which was the subject of many questions at the second debate, has taken three body blows in the last week or so: A report by the top U.S. inspector in Iraq that Saddam Hussein did not have weapons of mass destruction at the time the United States invaded, a speech by Paul Bremer, the former top U.S. official in Iraq, asserting that the United States had not sent enough troops to Iraq, and a statement by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that he had no firm evidence that there was a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda.

This continuing bad news from Iraq, rising oil prices, bad job numbers and a generally sluggish economy have caused Bush’s lead in the polls following his convention to evaporate.

Judging by the polls, the general feel of the campaign, and the general frenzy demonstrated by both sides, the race is probably tied.

ROGER SIMON COLUMN
OCTOBER 6, 2000

CLEVELAND - - Of course Dick Cheney didn’t remember meeting John Edwards. John Edwards is not a major Republican contributor. So why would Cheney remember him?

Cheney’s gaffe in the vice presidential debate Tuesday - - that he was meeting Edwards for the first time - - is likely to be remembered when other gaffes by both candidates are long forgotten.

That is the nature of politics. You can give a speech and talk about a hundred great issues, but if you fall into the orchestra pit at the end, guess what’s going to be remembered.

Neither candidate exactly fell into the orchestra pit here in what was a pretty vigorous debate. But both had good and bad moments. The Bush debate negotiators had insisted that the two men be seated, fearing that forcing Cheney to stand for 90 minutes might fatigue him.

Yet, even seated, Cheney seemed to run out of steam near the end of the debate, passing on a rebuttal, not taking his full allotment of time, and resting his chin on his hands a couple of times when he spoke, which made it hard to understand him.

He did score one major point, however, even though he was only half-correct in making it. Although John Kerry and John Edwards don’t like to talk about it, their initial support for the war in Iraq was based on the (mistaken) notion that it would be best to look patriotic and cede the war issue to George Bush and then fight the presidential campaign on domestic issues.

Neither anticipated Howard Dean, however, and how anti-war the Democratic party really was. So when Dean began doing well in his fundraising and the polls, Kerry and Edwards switched tacks and opposed funding the war.
Which Cheney brought up during the debate when he said, “Howard Dean was making major progress in the Democratic primaries, running away with the primaries based on an antiwar record. So, they in effect decided they would cast an antiwar vote…..”
In reality, though, not only did Dean not “run away with the primaries”, but Cheney went too far when he said: “Now, if they couldn't stand up (to) the pressures that Howard Dean represented, how can we expect them to stand up to al Qaeda?”
That a non-sequitar. Because two politicians act out of political expediency does not mean they are not capable of opposing terrorists. It simply doesn’t follow.
Edwards scored points, however, when he continued what John Kerry started in Coral Gables in the first presidential debate last week: “De-coupling” the war in Iraq from the war on terror.
“There is no connection between Saddam Hussein and the attacks of September 11th, period,” Edwards said forcefully. “ The 9/11 commission has said that's true. Colin Powell has said it's true. But the vice president keeps suggesting that there is. There is not. And, in fact, any connection with al Qaeda is tenuous at best.”
But both men also fell into a trap by forgetting that vice presidential debates are not about vice presidents. Michael Dukakis and Lloyd Bentsen spent a lot of time attacking Dan Quayle in 1988 and it was a waste of time. You can’t be unqualified for a do-nothing job. We all know the vice presidency is the proverbial “heartbeat away” from the presidency, but nobody votes based on that.
So it was a waste of time for Edwards to bring up Haliburton three times and for Cheney to whack Edwards on missing votes in the Senate. Both men needed to attack the top of the ticket - - which they did - - but not each other, which they could not resist.
I thought the debate was a draw, but Cheney did manage to stop the hemorrhaging started by George Bush’s poor performance last week. So the question I went around asking the spinners after the debate was, “Who did better? Cheney or Bush?”
Here are some replies:
Terence McAuliffe, Democratic Party chairman: “Cheney was trying to mop up the embarrassment of George Bush last week. He is like the prime minister. He tells George Bush what to do and when to do it. Clearly Dick Cheney looked better than George Bush. He put sentences together.”

Nicole Devenish, communications director for the Bush campaign: “Who was better Bush or Cheney? They both have really different styles. Cheney is comprehensive and methodical. Edwards looked befuddled, like a trial lawyer who couldn’t get his client off.”

Joe Lockhart, senior advisor to John Kerry: “I think it would have been almost impossible for Dick Cheney not do better than George Bush. So he did.
But let’s remember this is about war and peace. People are dying.”

Ken Mehlman, Bush campaign manager: “I think the two debates were very different. Both (Bush and Cheney) made their case, but tonight the vice president was fantastic.”

ROGER SIMON COLUMN
OCTOBER 4, 2004

WASHINGTON - - Ever since its inception 20 years ago, post-presidential debate “spin” has been largely worthless. Partisans from both sides come out after the debate and say predictably partisan things to reporters.

But the spin following the first debate between President Bush and John Kerry in Miami last week was different. For the first time, it was not worthless. Instead, it was a revelation.

Republican spinners were so muted in their assessment of the debate that an air of palpable gloom seemed to hang over them.

“Was Kerry more rhetorically skilled during the debate? Probably,” said Nicole Devenish, communications director for the Bush campaign. “That he out flourished us was something we were prepared for. But did he close the credibility gap? No.”

John McCain, who ran against Bush in the primaries four years ago, but who has been actively supporting him this year, said on his way into the spin room, “I thought both men acquitted themselves well. Did the dynamics of the race change? I don’t think so.”

Said Matthew Dowd, chief Bush strategist, “The race probably stays the way it is, which is an advantage for us. A draw is a problem for the person who is behind and we’ve got a five or six point advantage.”

Even Karl Rove, Bush’s chief political guru, who can breathe fire with the best of them, was doing no such thing following the debate. “I think it is important to keep in mind that debates will have an impact, but this is a very close race and will remain close to the end,” he said.

What was absent was a single Republican saying Bush had won the debate. And that was a clear sign of how badly Bush had done.

Before the debate, Kerry’s campaign team was trying to sell the notion that this was only the first of three debates, that it would not be decisive and that Kerry could slog on no matter how badly he did.

Minutes after the debate ended, however, the Democrats were singing - - even crowing - - a different tune. “When you win the first debate, the second is easier and you look forward to the third,” Joe Lockhart, a senior Kerry adviser, said with a huge grin.

The first debate was supposed to be on domestic affairs, but the Bush campaign insisted that it be switched to foreign affairs, feeling this was the president’s strongest area. The campaign also felt Bush might be able to score a knock-out of Kerry on charges he “flip-flopped” on Iraq, which might effectively end Kerry’s campaign.

But while Bush delivered a sharp attack, his opponent did not hit the mat. And Kerry managed to achieve one of his goals: the “de-coupling” of the war in Iraq from the war on terror.

Bush had effectively used the Republican convention to sell the notion that by attacking Saddam Hussein in Iraq, America was taking revenge for September 11 and striking back at terrorists.

No such thing, Kerry insisted during the debate. “Saddam Hussein didn’t attack us; Osama bin Laden attacked us,” he said. “Al Qaeda attacked us. And when we had Osama bin Laden cornered in the mountains of Tora Bora… (Bush) outsourced the job to Afghan warlords….”

Kerry had spent a great deal of time rehearsing his Iraq answers, but as he flew from his debate prep site in Wisconsin to Florida on the day before the debate, his aides approached him with a surprise.

They felt his responses on Iraq lacked a bit of emotion because Kerry never actually saw the nightly TV pictures of the fighting and carnage there. “He is always campaigning when the news is on,” Lockhart told me, “so we put together 15 minutes of clips from the news, put it on a computer and left him alone to watch it.” Lockhart believes it made a difference. “Before, he knew the issue intellectually,” Lockhart said. “Now he knows it viscerally.”

Still, Bush did not hit the mat, either, and was emotional and convincing when conveying his concern for those fighting in Iraq and their loved ones at home. He told the story of Missy Johnson of North Carolina whose husband was killed in Iraq, saying, “I told her after we prayed and teared up and laughed some that I thought her husband’s sacrifice was noble and worthy because I understand the stakes of this war on terror.”

All political attention now turns to the sole vice presidential debate between Dick Cheney and John Edwards on Tuesday at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. While few voters cast their votes based on the vice presidential candidate, the debate could be pivotal to Edward’s political future. If the Kerry/Edwards ticket wins on Nov. 2, Edwards’s future is set, at least for four years. If it loses, however, Edwards’s performance in the debate will go a long way in determining how the party views him as a presidential candidate in 2008. Will he be the main challenger to Hillary Clinton or just another losing vice presidential candidate like Joe Lieberman?

Edwards’s debate performance is also important because Edwards may not be able to deliver on his big pitch in the Democratic primaries: that he can win southern states. True, he is not at the top of the ticket, but Edwards could fail to carry his home state of North Carolina in November, which would be an embarrassment. In fact, the Democrats could fail to carry any Southern state except Florida (which the Kerry campaign now rates as even.)

“If you had told Democrats that in October the main issue of this campaign was going to be Iraq, the question is whether they would have picked Edwards at all,” one political analyst said. “Kerry picked Edwards because he thought the campaign was going to be about domestic issues but it hasn’t turned out that way. If Kerry knew the campaign was going to be about Iraq, I am betting he would have gone with Joe Biden as his vice president.”

There is also the issue of Edwards’s friendly nature. This was seen at one time as being a good counterpoint to Kerry’s “aloofness”, but as the campaign has gotten down and dirty, the question is whether Edwards can be mean enough to face down Cheney’s attack skills.