TODAY, new Republican vice-presidential nominee Dick Cheney will hit the five major Sunday television talk shows - no small day's work - to cap a week that has unleashed frenzied spin.
Mr Cheney's selection by presidential hopeful George W. Bush last Tuesday confirmed that the campaign proper for Election 2000 had started, judging by some of the invective that has followed. The November election looks set to be one of the closest in decades and it has plenty of potential to get ugly, despite a battle-weary public and time-worn pledges from both candidates to take the 'high road'.
It is a minefield of propaganda on both sides, trying to sort through the shifting positions, skewed facts and distorted records to get an idea of the truth. Successful spin, after all, is just like good propaganda - at its most effective if it is partly true. Shortly after Mr Cheney's nomination was confirmed, loyal Democrats were quietly putting it about how relieved they were at his selection. As a white conservative former congressman and defence secretary to 'Dubya's' father, Mr Cheney was a bland, dour choice, they said - an uninspired throw-back who would ignite little competition on the hustings and could even dent George W.'s chances, by revealing the ongoing influence of dad. The black, moderate former joint chief of staff, Colin Powell, apparently unwilling to stand, could have been far more damaging.
As news spread, Democrat presidential hopeful Al Gore steered clear of personal attacks, and his hard-boiled former campaign manager Tony Coelho actually spoke up for Mr Cheney's reputation for a calm integrity among the opposition. Perhaps the naive could be forgiven for thinking that they really did see him as no threat. After all, Mr Gore had, earlier in his career, also praised Mr Cheney's likable demeanour. 'He is a good guy,' he reportedly said in 1989. 'I like him a lot and he is well liked by his colleagues.'
It did not last.
The Republicans intensified their own spin, reminding people that Mr Cheney's selection - giving an undoubted gravitas to an inexperienced candidate - actually proved Mr Bush's ability to lead. Rather than select a candidate more electrifying on the campaign trail, so confident was he of victory that he had made a choice with the longer term in view. Mr Cheney's main advantages to Mr Bush will come once in office - a man who knows Washington like the back of his hand, having served, when he was just 34, as president Gerald Ford's chief of staff, also as a Congress member, and as George Bush senior's defence secretary, leading the decisions on the Gulf War.
The Democrats, meanwhile, were busy going back into Mr Cheney's years as a congressman for Wyoming, attempting to smear him with his own record as pro-gun, anti-abortion, anti-minority and anti-women's rights during critical votes during the 1980s, when an array of spending decisions loomed. Black leader and Gore campaigner, Jesse Jackson, reached for the Bible. 'Dick Cheney has an image that is palatable,' he thundered. 'But Jesus warned us to beware of wolves in sheep's clothing.'
