V.P. Candidates Debate Tonight

With exactly four weeks remaining in an election campaign in which the presidential candidates are separated by a razor-thin margin, the vice presidential candidates meet in their only debate tonight.

In more conventional times, when an incumbent might be expected to coast to reelection, the confrontation between Vice President Dick Cheney, the Republican, and his Democratic counterpart, Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, would carry little weight. But the debate at Case Western Reserve University at 6 p.m. PDT bears special consideration this year, with the two presidential candidates seeking any leverage they can to gain an advantage.

The debate draws together two candidates of marked differences in political style and policy.

Cheney, barely a dozen years older than Edwards, is a political veteran: a Washington insider who served as White House chief of staff three decades ago during the Gerald R. Ford administration, as a Republican congressional leader in the 1980s, and as Defense secretary in the early 1990s, before taking over as chief of the now-embattled Halliburton company, the oil and defense contractor, and then moving back to the White House as George W. Bush’s vice president.

Edwards, a very successful trial attorney, is completing a single term as a U.S. senator.

But their biographies are only part of the story: Cheney, for all his low-key growling-voiced public style, is an accomplished political fighter. He is well versed in the nuances of policy — both foreign and domestic — and accomplished in presenting his argument, no matter how hard the edge, in an avuncular manner.

Edwards, who honed his public persona — an aw-shucks, good-old-boy charm reflecting his South Carolina childhood — in the courtroom, gained valuable debating experience during the hard-fought primary campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. He was the final candidate to cede the field to Sen. John F. Kerry, and his performance during the primaries and in support of Kerry after the race ended helped him gain his place at Kerry’s side for the general election campaign.

Edwards has conducted an aggressive campaign, focused largely on the small towns and rural areas where the Kerry team hopes he can make headway in once loyal Democratic communities that have lately supported Republicans.

Both candidates have tempered their recent campaigning to prepare for the debate, although Edwards planned one campaign event in the Cleveland area today.

Cheney spent a long weekend off the campaign trail, resting and working on his debate preparations at his home in the shadow of the Grand Teton Mountains in Jackson, Wyo.

Cleveland is a strategic site for the debate. According to U.S. Census Bureau figures, it is the most impoverished city in the nation. Just blocks from its sparkling glass and stone public library and the shores of Lake Erie, which today was an inviting but autumn-chilly aqua under cloudless skies, storefronts sit vacant in the heart of a downtown shopping area.

But more important to the political campaigns, it is a Democratic city in what is perhaps the most important battleground state. Ohio narrowly supported Bush four years ago over Al Gore, but since then its economy has been battered — and it is a rare day when the president, Kerry, Cheney or Edwards isn’t visiting somewhere in the state.

Under the rules set up by the presidential debate commission, the meeting tonight is not limited to any specific topics — but the conduct of the war in Iraq, and the intelligence on which the decision to invade Iraq was based, are points on which the Democrats have sought to attack Bush and Cheney.

And Cheney, who devotes roughly half his campaign stump speech to defending those decisions, and who links the war in Iraq to the nation’s efforts to protect itself from terrorist attack, appears comfortable in discussing national security matters and in sharply challenging the Democrats’ domestic policies.

And without specifically referring to Edwards, he often takes a dig at trial lawyers, saying that U.S. companies could hire more workers if they did not feel compelled to hire lawyers to defend themselves against what he calls “frivolous lawsuits.”

Recent polls suggest that the two vice presidential candidates are evenly matched in their standing among American voters.

Asked who was likely to be a better debater, in a CNN/Gallup/USA Today poll, 42% said Edwards and 40% favored Cheney. Data from the Annenberg Public Policy Center found that 37% of those surveyed had a favorable opinion of Cheney and 38% rated Edwards favorably. But Cheney was viewed unfavorably by 42% of those questioned; 31% had an unfavorable impression of Edwards.

A New York Times/CBS News survey found that 52% thought Cheney had the ability to be an effective president, and 46% had the same view of Edwards.