Vice-Presidential debate review: Biden v. Ryan at Danville, Ky.

Friday afternoon (Australian Eastern Summer Time), the vice-presidential debate between incumbent Joe Biden (D-Del.) and challenger Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) was held in the middle of nowhere, a.k.a. Center College in Danville, Kentucky. Biden was hoping to halt the Romney-Ryan ticket’s momentum after the Republican ticket’s uptick in the polls since the first debate, while Ryan needed to demonstrate that he was ready for the big time. In some measure, both probably achieved their goals, and both sides are desperately trying to spin it to make it look as if they won.

1) Biden was constantly frustrated by what he saw as Ryan’s dissembling and evasiveness. On occasions, he was amusing in his ribbing of his opponent; at other times, he brought back memories of Al Gore’s sighs against George W. Bush in 2000. He also had moments of extreme frustration, where he would talk down to the moderator and demand that he be given equal time (in fact, he spoke for longer than Ryan in total). How he is perceived to have performed will be determined by whichever one of these modes the media portray him in.

2) Ryan came across as knowledgeable and personable when talking about domestic policy, but his foreign policy talking points sounded as if they were taken verbatim from neocon propaganda (eg. the ‘reset’ with Russia not working, Obama going on an ‘apology tour’). Oddly, when asked about when he believed the U.S. should intervene in a foreign country, he gave a rather Kissingerian answer, that is, that it should do so only when doing so would be in its national interest. He also has a bit of a tendency to disguise his lack of foreign policy knowledge by name-dropping generals he’s met or places in Afghanistan he’s visited.

3) The second-last segment of the nine was a weird one. The moderator said something to the effect of: ‘you’re both Catholics. Whaddya reckon about abortion?’ Not sure what the point of this was, other than to make Ryan look the better Catholic for adhering to the Church’s position on abortion, or to provide the media with more talking points about ‘TEH GENDER GAP!!!11!’ Speaking of which, it wasn’t as pronounced in this debate as the last one – Biden spent at least half of his talking time more favoured by men than by women, and the two ‘worms’ converged more than they did last week.

4) There wasn’t much in the debate that will serve as a ‘game-changer’. The most exciting part was when Ryan compared his tax plan to John F. Kennedy’s tax cut/stimulus, causing Biden to ask “Oh, so you’re Jack Kennedy now?” For a second I thought Biden was going to do a Lloyd Bentsen on him, but it wasn’t to be.