Salon has just posted the wittiest, most deliciously trenchant column on Dick Cheney or anyone else that I have read in a long, long while. Its by Joyce McGreevy.

If this opening doesn't get you both snickering and nodding, you have not been paying attention:

Ominous rumblings from Mount Cheney
Poked and prodded by his younger opponent, Old Dick lets loose clouds of steam and ash but doesn't blow.

The man known as "only a heartbeat and a jumpstart" away from the presidency called Democratic Sen. John Edwards to account for his impertinent truth-telling Tuesday evening in a debate at Case Western University.

Conceding the point, Edwards recognized Dick Cheney's most notable and enduring campaign strategy, saying, "Mr. Vice President, you are still not being straight with the American people."

Throughout the 90-minute debate, Cheney drew on his long experience, carpet-bombing the proceedings with magnificent mendacity. Whether claiming never to have met John Edwards or denying that he had frequently made a false connection between Iraq and September 11, the front end of the Cheney-Bush racehorse was out to show that he could have his yellowcake and delete it too.

Cheney also proved himself the expert at directing many answers under the table, the better to highlight his preferred location for making deals. At other times the vice president, who suffers from prolonged lack of exposure to all known light sources, folded himself neatly into his own skin while simultaneously executing an upward glower, a downward bite, and a sideways utterance. This left Edwards, the political neophyte, with no choice but to look the American people square in the eye and speak plainly. Indeed, Edwards looked every inch a Portrait of the Senator as a Young Man to Cheney’s older, more developed Portrait of Dorian Gray.

From AP:

First, the lie, and the context:

Oct. 6, 2004  |  CLEVELAND (AP) -- Vice President Dick Cheney said Tuesday night that the debate with Democratic Sen. John Edwards marked the first time they had met. In fact, the two had met at least three times previously.

Cheney made the remark while accusing Edwards of frequent absences from Senate votes.

"Now, in my capacity as vice president, I am the president of Senate, the presiding officer. I'm up in the Senate most Tuesdays when they're in session. The first time I ever met you was when you walked on the stage tonight," Cheney told Edwards during the debate.

Great cover story in Slate this morning, nailing exactly how Edwards trounced Cheney last night, by the frequently conservative William Saletan:

Runners Advance

Edwards keeps the Democrats' rally going

Highlights:

Cheney seemed to think most viewers were tuning in to judge the vice presidential nominees. Edwards seemed to think they were tuning in to hear about the presidential nominees.

If Cheney guessed right on that question, he probably won. But if he guessed wrong—and I suspect he did—Edwards kicked his expletive. If you watched this debate as an uninformed voter, you heard an avalanche of reasons to vote for Kerry. You heard 23 times that Kerry has a "plan" for some big problem or that Bush doesn't. You heard 10 references to Halliburton, with multiple allegations of bribes, no-bid contracts, and overcharges. You heard 13 associations of Bush with drug or insurance companies. You heard four attacks on him for outsourcing. You heard again and again that he opposed the 9/11 commission and the Department of Homeland Security, that he "diverted" resources from the fight against al-Qaida to the invasion of Iraq, and that while our troops "were on the ground fighting, [the administration] lobbied the Congress to cut their combat pay." You heard that Kerry served in Vietnam and would "double the special forces." You heard that Bush is coddling the Saudis, that Cheney "cut over 80 weapons systems," and that the administration has no air-cargo screening or unified terrorist watch list.

As the debate turned to domestic policy, you heard that we've lost 1.6 million net jobs and 2.7 million net manufacturing jobs under Bush. You heard that he's the first president in 70 years to lose jobs. You heard that 4 million more people live in poverty, and 5 million have lost their health insurance. You heard that the average annual premium has risen by $3,500. You heard that we've gone from a $5 trillion surplus to a $3 trillion debt. You heard that a multimillionaire sitting by his swimming pool pays a lower tax rate than a soldier in Iraq. You heard that Bush has underfunded No Child Left Behind by $27 billion. You heard that Kerry, unlike Bush, would let the government negotiate "to get discounts for seniors" and would let "prescription drugs into this country from Canada." You heard that at home and abroad, Bush offers "four more years of the same."

. . .

The charge that did the most damage was the one Edwards leveled at the outset: that Bush and Cheney aren't telling the truth about prewar and postwar Iraq. Edwards listed the evidence contradicting Cheney's assurances about the current situation: the monthly escalation of American casualties, criticism of the administration's incompetence by Republican senators, and a critique issued Monday by Bush's former Iraq administrator. Then he listed the evidence contradicting Cheney's associations of the Iraq war with 9/11: testimony from Secretary of State Powell and reports from the 9/11 commission and the CIA.

I couldn't reach my blog last night, so had to comment on others' blogs. But here are a few of my main thoughts:

Great piece buried on page 25 of today's Washington Post:

(The writer, who heads a Democratic polling firm, conducted polls for President Bill Clinton's 1996 reelection campaign.)

I have been scoffing all year at this fanciful idea that there are almost no swing voters this cycle. Right.

The opening of the piece lays out the gist:

For months, pundits and the press have been peddling an obviously misguided theory of the American electorate: that all the voters have chosen one side or the other and thus there are almost no swing voters left. But a funny thing has happened. Since July the presidential horse race in public polls has gone from as much as an 8-point Kerry lead to as much as a 13-point Bush lead and is back again to a close race.

The reality is that for months about a quarter of the electorate has been unsure of its choice for president, and despite the hundreds of millions of dollars of partisan advertising and rhetoric, that quarter remains in play. The recent controversy over how many Democrats or Republicans are in public polls has obscured the fact that the largest party in America is no party -- a plurality of American voters self-identify as independents, and they are the voters who will decide the election.

Why are the pundits so wrong? Because they bought into what people in both camps had a very real interest in selling. Liberals and conservatives wanted their respective candidates to believe that appealing to swing voters was ideologically weak, unprincipled and ineffective. They wanted to convince their candidates that the path to victory was to tack to the right or the left, thereby validating their own agendas on Election Day.

Of course journalists bought in too, because it made for a new storyline--this election is different! It's novel, they love novel. They just lack a bit in ethics.

Most of the public still doesn't get that the press doesn't have a liberal or conservative bias, they have a bias toward the best story--story in the sense that a novel is or is not a good story. Best yarn. It makes the best copy, makes them feel good about revealing something new, creating something distinctivive, and of course, scoring the front page.

And they so easily delude themselves into believing it's true. All it needs is a bit of plausibility, which is not a high bar to reach.

Plausible, but usually wrong.

Like this vanishing swing voter tripe.

Meanwhile, more on where to find the swingers:

Who are the voters swinging back and forth? They are the very ones we identified in 1996 as the most important group of swing voters: middle-aged white women. In polling we conducted for the New Democrat Network in late May, these voters were split nearly evenly between Kerry and Bush, but by September, Bush led this group by 28 percentage points.

These modern moms work, have kids and live in the suburbs. They are not concerned about party labels, Vietnam service records or the National Guard. They are voting on the basis of what they think will be best for the future of their families. Forty-seven percent of these voters believe security is the most important issue -- a reversal from late May, when 50 percent said the economy was most important and only 28 percent named security. It is not too late to turn them around again.

And the writer's ideas on how to reach them:

So what will it take to win these swing voters? A tough approach to terrorism is a prerequisite, but what will bring them back is a focus on their families, the ballooning deficits and a vision for curing the domestic ills of this country. (This is where Bush is weakest.) And above all, it will require a positive approach. These voters are looking for ideas, not insults.