I’ve been asked about a dozen times what I made of the Veep debate the other night. One thing that was obvious – we saw both camps sending out their best debaters.

So, a few comments:

1: Kerry is better off debating W than he would be Cheney. The Dick is a cold, soulless whore who’ll be on the express train to South Hell as soon as his diseased ticker finally shuts down, but he is not indecisive in these kinds of events. He lied like a cheap rug on multiple occasions, but he did so with certainty and conviction. There was none of the hesitation, bumbling, or abject confusion we saw from Dubya a few nights earlier.

2: Cheney did gak once, though, and big time, when he sent people to factcheck.COM. That site redirects to GeorgeSoros.com, which is the last place in hell he wanted to send people on a search for info that supports his position. I suspect he meant factcheck.ORG.

3: Edwards would have stomped Bush within in an inch of his political life. Edwards was born to this environment – he was prepared, and he thinks on his feet really well. Of the four, he’s the one you’ll always have the hardest time catching off guard. You could feed him a question that he’d never even thought of before and my guess is he’d come back right away with a pretty solid answer. Further, he’s so at ease speaking, and in this sense is a real contrast to Kerry, who even when he’s rolling comes off as stiff and distant. Edwards has the “regular guy” thing nailed, even though he’s the sort of lawyer that a lot of Americans detest. He’s going to be a real handful for Hillary or whoever else wants to be president in either 2k8 or 2k12, as the case may be, and if Bush wins next month you can expect John-Boy and Hil to start ramping up some preliminary water-testing sooner rather than later.

4: Who won? Well, on the truth of the issues Edwards won, and on the rules of formal debate he won, too. On the only standard that matters, uninformed public perception, it was probably a draw. The goal for both candidates was to go rabid pit bull on the other side and play solid defense. Land a couple haymakers and stay off the canvas yourself, and you can declare victory. In the final analysis, there’s not too much that either guy could have done to win big, given the circumstances, but there were ways both could have hurt their tickets. I don’t think either side did, so in that respect you’d call it a draw.