ountering a long history during which vice presidential candidates have been assigned the roles of hired pugilists in national campaigns, Republican Dick Cheney and Democrat Joe Lieberman delivered statesmanlike performances in their debate Thursday night. The tone was a welcome upgrade from Tuesday's presidential clash between George W. Bush and Al Gore.
While some of the claims and counter-claims would benefit from simultaneous translation, policy differences were clear enough.
Certainly this was true on taxes. Cheney portrayed the Gore-Lieberman tax cut proposal as highly targeted - a series of 29 credits or deductions that are both complicated and intrusive, that reward ''Americans who live their lives in certain ways.'' Certainly they are complicated, but the implication that they amount to Big Brother manipulation by the federal government is off base. Bush wants a broader tax cut, but also supports tax changes that target specific groups, such as married couples and the heirs of large estates.
Lieberman emphasized that the Bush-Cheney tax cuts heavily favor the wealthy - 43 percent of the benefits go to the top one percent of taxpayers, he said. This ignores targeted provisions in the GOP plan that would help low earners, but overall it is accurate. Bush thinks it is fair to return money to taxpayers largely in proportion with how they paid it, so the wealthy naturally will benefit more.
The logic of this will appeal to persons who don't believe in progressive taxation, but it is a hard argument to make at a time when the incomes of the wealthy are increasing much faster than those of ordinary Americans.
For all its decorum, Thursday's debate underplayed some issues that, while contentious, are of legitimate interest to voters.
Lieberman was only asked to explain a small fraction of the policy differences he has had with Gore. And no mention was made of Cheney's record in Congress, some of which was extremely conservative, or of his failure to vote in a number of local elections.
At their second debate next week, Bush and Gore should try to combine the style of Cheney and Lieberman with a deeper exploration of their parties' differences.
