Broken Record

On a more positive note, Cheney did do well (and certainly much better than President Bush) in defending the war in Iraq.

Still, there's just one point that's dying to be made, and for some reason neither Bush nor Cheney want to make it. Now that the foreign policy portion of the debates is over, they may never get to.

Kerry, at the first debate, and Edwards again last night, both keep pointing to Gulf War I as the model of what a "real coalition" should look like.

Here's what I was dying to hear Cheney say last night:

It's interesting that the senator keeps bringing up the coalition for the first Gulf War as some sort of gold standard for coalitions. I certainly agree it was a great coalition. As the Secretary of Defense at that time, I helped build that coalition. But we must take note of something important here. After we built that coalition--which Senator Edwards uses as the benchmark of great coalitions--John Kerry still voted against the first Gulf War. Though we had United Nations approval for the war, and though we built this immense, multilateral coalition, it still wasn't enough for John Kerry. One shudders to think what sort of coalition would pass John Kerry's 'global test' and cause him to actually defend America's interests.

Cheney finally started attacking some of Kerry's actual record last night. They need to do more of it. If the Republicans stick to the "flip-flopper" attack exclusively and ignore the Kerry record, they will lose in November. Period.