So said John Edwards, in tonight’s vice presidential debate with Dick Cheney.

As he has done many times before, Edwards also said he was proud of his record of suing drug companies, insurance companies and HMOs. He did sue those kinds of defendants sometimes, but his actual specialty was suing doctors. Why won’t he say he was proud of that, too?

Unless I missed it, Cheney did not do much to contradict Edwards’ claim that his proposed liability reforms will keep bad cases out of court. For more on that question, see my August WSJ piece.

More: Why, asks Michael Graham of National Review Online. wasn’t Cheney familiar with Edwards’ legal cases? It’s hardly as if they’re above criticism. On the senator’s CP cases, also check out the correspondence back in August between Ramesh Ponnuru and an unnamed letter-writer on NRO “The Corner”. Plus: Prof. Bainbridge comments. FactCheck.org (not .com!) sorts out the Halliburton stuff. Jay Nordlinger says Edwards “sounded more anti-lawsuit than Cheney did”. And CBS News reports, based on feedback from its live poll (in which viewers graded the debaters as they went along using their remote controls), that: “Both candidates scored high points when they talked about the need to limit lawsuit and keep frivolous lawsuits out of the system, Cheney when he mentioned that doctors were being driven out of practice ?- especially OB-GYNs, which gave him very high ratings with women. Edwards did well when he said lawsuits must be limited and when he talked of his own experience fighting in the courts.” (“Uncommitteds Tab Edwards Winner”, Oct. 5).

Filed under: John Edwards, politics