VP Debate: Backups Get The Ball
On the campaign trail, Vice President Dick Cheney often jabs at Democrat John Edwards for his past as a trial lawyer, blaming his sort for "frivolous lawsuits" that raise health care costs. In turn, Edwards rails against Cheney's ties to the company he once headed, accusing the Republican of favoring his "friends" at Halliburton.
After lashing out at each other for months from a distance, the two vice presidential candidates meet face-to-face Tuesday night at Case Western Reserve University for their only debate before the Nov. 2 election.
Typically, vice presidential debates are nothing more than campaign sideshows that don't impact the race much, if at all. But this debate, both Republicans and Democrats say, has taken on a higher level of importance, given the fallout from President Bush's performance — and scowling demeanor — in his first debate with John Kerry last week.
Polls show voters believe Kerry won that matchup.
Sixty percent of registered voters surveyed for a CBS News/New York Times poll said they believe Kerry won the Sept. 30 debate in Miami, compared to 23 percent who think Mr. Bush prevailed.
Kerry's performance helped boost the Democratic ticket five points to 47 percent — tied with the Bush/Cheney team in the overall race. One percent of the likely voters surveyed backed Ralph Nader.
Round 2 of Bush-Kerry comes Friday.
But first, it's the vice presidential candidates' turn.
Watch the debate on your local CBS station, or here on CBSNews.com, beginning at 9 p.m. ET.
Republicans grousing about Mr. Bush's appearance were hoping that Cheney, with his decades of foreign policy experience, delivers a solid showing to give the party a boost of confidence.
At the same time, Democrats who claimed victory from the first presidential debate were banking on Edwards to continue the momentum with a strong performance based on the skills the North Carolina senator learned in the courtroom for more than 20 years.
Because of the stakes, both campaigns expect high viewership, which would be unusual for a vice presidential debate. In 2000, 46.5 million people watched the first presidential debate between Mr. Bush and Al Gore, before viewership plummeted to 28.5 million for the vice presidential encounter between Cheney and Sen. Joe Lieberman.
On Tuesday night, both Cheney and Edwards were expected to focus on the candidates at the top of each party's ticket. The debate was to cover both domestic and foreign policy, although advisers to both campaigns conceded that Iraq likely would to dominate the confrontation.
Cheney was expected to echo his refrain from the campaign trail that Kerry is unfit to lead the war against terror because his positions on national security and foreign policy shift "with the wind." In his first one-on-one debate, Edwards was to make the case that Mr. Bush misled the public about the war on terror and got the nation into "a mess" in Iraq with no plan for peace.
Republicans and Democrats alike said they expected that the former careers of Cheney and Edwards, each considered controversial by the opposing party, to be brought up.
Cheney was chief executive at Halliburton, a major government contractor in Iraq, before joining the Republican ticket in 2000. Edwards has used Cheney's past to paint the White House as cozy with big business.
Before running for the Senate, Edwards was a trial lawyer specializing in personal injury cases in which juries granted his clients multimillion-dollar awards. Cheney often blames trial lawyers for the rising costs of health care.
The debate was being staged in Ohio, considered one of the top prizes in this election. With 20 electoral votes, the state went to Mr. Bush by 3.6 percentage points in 2000.
Seeking to project an air of confidence, Edwards arrived in Cleveland a day early and on Tuesday was holding a town hall style meeting with voters in nearby Parma before the debate. He had scheduled a post-debate rally as well.
Cheney was flying to Cleveland on Tuesday from his home in Jackson, Wyoming, and also was attending a post-debate rally.
While vice presidential debates rarely change the tide of a campaign, they can produce memorable moments and images.
In 1988, Texas Sen. Lloyd Bentsen hit Dan Quayle with the "Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy" line.
Adm. Jim Stockdale, Ross Perot's 1992 running mate, appeared out of place at the Veep debate — an impression he solidified by asking, "Who am I? What am I doing here?"
The Veep debate is also a platform for potential presidential candidates, and an important one because it is usually the last time the No. 2 man has a national audience, whether his ticket wins or loses in November.
Vice presidential nominees who later led their tickets include Bob Dole, Walter Mondale, George H. W. Bush and Gore. Quayle and Lieberman tried for the nomination in later years, but came up short.
But the national limelight can hurt as well as help a running mate with larger ambitions. In 1976, Dole's acerbic performance — in which he labeled World War II and the Korean conflict "Democratic wars" — saddled him with a "hatchet man" label under which he labored for years.