What? No rash of posts on the all-important VP debate? Don't be falling down on the job, now, boys. I'll step right up and admit that I turned it off before it was over; about 10:00, Eastern Daylight, I'd had my fill. What can you say? Dick Cheney is thoroughly competent in a dull, rather technocratic kind of way. He had facts at his disposal. He was prepared and articulate. You can see why he was a successful CEO. And, like Kerry the other night, he won -- on paper.

That said, John Edwards was also prepared and articulate, even if his manner was condescending, embarrassing in its aw-shucks folksiness. It was like watching a huckleberry car salesman who thinks he's charming the knickers off Auntie Em down at Charlie's Used Lot. It's disgusting and transparent, and (viz Bill Clinton) it seems to work on many Americans.

Now, honestly, I don't know what to think. I found Edwards unctuous and sly. I'd count Grammy's silver dessert spoons after a visit from Edwards. But I thought the same of Clinton, and America still is not over its romance with the big lug. So Edwards's dip-spit charm and greasy smile might just do the trick. He was certaily the winner last night in the style category. Some of his winning moments included the rap on Cheney for opposing the Department of Education, way back when (as only a barbarian could, right?); the Halliburton stuff, mud that he made stick by sheer plod; and the Tora Bora point, to which Cheney never really had a comeback.

You'd like to think that Americans would see the competence in Cheney, but Senator Handsome seems to fit the empty-headed but blandly attractive zeitgeist of celebrity-driven America. To put it plainly, he looks good enough to be somebody important, even if he's not. That might be all he needs.

That said, who the hell watched, other than me and half a million bloggers?