As soon as John Kerry announced his choice of John Edwards as his running mate last week, the contrast was unavoidable. This autumn, Edwards, a telegenic, bubbly lawyer who looks 40, will go up against Big Daddy Cheney, the bald, dour, snarling vice-president whose most recent public pronouncement was to tell a leading Democratic senator to “go f*** yourself”. Edwards is a Southerner from a modest background, but he is also a member of the new class — a multi-millionaire trial lawyer with a fiercely independent career woman for a wife. Cheney is from Wyoming, one of the most beautiful...