Few question Cheney's foreign policy knowledge -- unlike that of his boss, who has confused Slovenia and Slovakia -- so it made sense for him to attempt to defend Bush's statement on Tuesday night that it "would be a wonderful time for the president of Russia to step into the Balkans and convince Mr. Milosevic it's in his best interest and his country's best interest to leave office."

Cheney gave his boss a two-day-delayed "Big time" on this.

"It's now clear from the press that in fact that's exactly what they were doing," Cheney said. He said that Gore had "pooh-poohed" Bush's suggestion.

But Gore was right to pooh-pooh. He should have pooh-poohed. It was a good pooh-pooh.

Because as of Tuesday night, it wasn't clear if Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin had even accepted the validity of the election of Milosevic's rival, Vojislav Kostunica -- in stark contrast to what many other world leaders were saying as they called for Milosevic to go. Putin has since offered to help mediate the controversial election, but that, still, is not quite the same as acknowledging that Kostunica won.

Likewise, Cheney's nonanswers on racial profiling (which I have a hard time imagining a Bush/Cheney administration opposing) and RU-486 (which I have a hard time imagining them not opposing) were moderate, calm and reassuring but disingenuous and dishonest. Surely Lieberman knew that, but the tenor of the evening might have kept him from pointing it out to voters.

However, Lieberman's attempt to cast Cheney's questions about our military preparedness in starkly Gore-like terms fell flat.

It's a classic Gore maneuver: to turn a question on its head so that his opponent is somehow not only incorrect, but a bad person, as well. He did this to Sen. Bill Bradley during the primaries, insinuating that Bradley was somehow calling into question the wherewithal of the members of the Congressional Black Caucus since they hadn't endorsed him. Gore again did this Tuesday night to Bush, when the Texas governor hammered Gore's unwillingness to reform Social Security, saying his plan calls for "loading up IOU's for future generations."

"When F.D.R. established Social Security, they didn't call them IOU's, they called them the full faith and credit of the United States," Gore snarled. "If you don't have trust in that, I do."

Lieberman borrowed Gore's dodge when the question of the state of the military came up. "It's not right, and it's not good for our military to run them down essentially in the midst of a partisan political debate," Lieberman said.

But Cheney wasn't about to let his fellow draft-deferrer get away with it, and rightly so. "I'm not attacking the military, Joe. I have enormous regard for the men and women of the U.S. military. I had [the] privilege of working with them as the secretary of defense … It's irresponsible to suggest we shouldn't have that debate. That we should ignore what is a major, major concern."

Both candidates reached their perfect pandering fever-pitch when asked about whether gays or lesbians should be given "all the constitutional rights of all Americans."

Though both oppose gay and lesbian marriage, they both seemed to be softening on that. (Soccer moms have gay and lesbian friends after all.)

"I must say I'm thinking about this because I have friends who are in gay and lesbian partnerships who said to me, 'Is it fair we don't have legal rights to inheritance, visitation when one partner is ill to health care benefits?' That's why I'm thinking about it," Lieberman said.

More shocking was Cheney -- who has never voted in favor of a gay and lesbian rights measure, opposed the early days of AIDS funding and has refused to discuss the fact that his own daughter, Mary, happens to be a lesbian. "Like Joe, I also wrestle with the extent to which there ought to be legal sanction of those relationships," Cheney said. "I think we ought to do everything we can to tolerate and accommodate whatever kind of relationships people want to enter into."

Does Cheney know that his running mate has opposed the rights of gay and lesbian couples to adopt, even supporting the right of the state of Texas to take a child from a gay couple to place it in the home of a straight couple?

But what was more interesting is that Shaw's question was not specifically about gay and lesbian marriage, or worker protections. Rather, it was broad enough for either to say that they supported constitutional rights for every law-abiding American citizen ... next question. But both knew what Shaw was really asking, and both more-or-less responded to the question. Like adults. Somewhat pandering adults, but adults nonetheless.

Similarly, when Cheney told Lieberman he'd been disappointed that he attended a fundraiser where a comedian made light of Bush's religion, Lieberman said that the joke was "distasteful" and "unacceptable." Then he did something you almost never hear a politician do.

"Any offense that was done I apologize for," Lieberman said. Like a grown-up. The night was full of those.

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