Atticus Finch versus the CEO of White House Halliburton Inc. That's how the Vice-Presidential Mass Debate between John Edwards and Dick Strangelove looked to me on Wednesday morning my time. Edwards will be president one day, maybe 2009, maybe 2013. Cheney is president now. He is the most powerful vice-president in history, and certainly the most evil (with the possible exception of Spiro Agnew). I scored it to Edwards but hey, I despise Cheney too much to be objective.

Of course, none of the other vice presidential candidates were invited to this exclusive club. I'll add their names in the comments later.

Full transcript of the debate at the Washington Post, which also has a link to the full (yawn) 100 minute video.

The following is probably as close as anyone got to the Lloyd Bentsen to Dan Quayle moment of 1988:

CHENEY: Gwen, I want to go back to the last comment, and then I'll come back to Israel-Palestine.

The reason they keep trying to attack Halliburton is because they want to obscure their own record.

And Senator, frankly, you have a record in the Senate that's not very distinguished. You've missed 33 out of 36 meetings in the Judiciary Committee, almost 70 percent of the meetings of the Intelligence Committee.

You've missed a lot of key votes: on tax policy, on energy, on Medicare reform.

Your hometown newspaper has taken to calling you "Senator Gone." You've got one of the worst attendance records in the United States Senate.

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.

Lead zeppelin anyone?

Somehow Jabberbot grunged the posting of Rahul Mahajan's latest updates from Empire Notes, but Rahul did some semi-live blogging of the debate this morning, which can be found here.

Mass Debate 2, which is being held in a Town Hall environment, takes place on Friday night US time. Being late Saturday morning here, I am unsure of my chances of watching it live. It depends whether I can convince Adara that George W Bush and John F Kerry are two of the Wiggles...