My take on last night’s VP debate, for anyone interested:
Both candidates had their moments, but overall I think the debate was a draw.
Ryan clearly did his homework. I thought the debate was largely skewed towards foreign policy where Biden would be a Goliath to anyone’s David, but Ryan held his own and Biden’s strength on that subject matter proved not to be of any advantage to him in this faceoff with Ryan. Ryan was the candidate of ideas and optimism, and he wins the prize for best one-liners.
Biden was aggressive, and while that would normally be a good thing, he took it way too far. He rarely let Ryan speak without interrupting him once if not multiple times, and he left unanswered several good questions – not to mention all the facial expressions. Yet, if I ever had a record as bad as the Obama/Biden record was, I’d want Biden in my court. He was masterful at making all the excuses in the world for their lack of success, and yet, it didn’t sound all that much like he was making a lot of excuses. He kept asking for equal time to respond to questions, all the while being ahead about 2 minutes ahead in speaking time over Ryan. And, it seemed like Biden must have gotten a new set of teeth that he wanted to show off – and show off he did. Those things were big and shiny!
At a certain point later in the debate the arguing back and forth left me (a political junkie) bored and disinterested. I’d bet a lot of regular-Joes out there just stopped listening to both of them.
Ryan’s best response of the night was when he was ticking off the economic stats in Biden’s home town of Scranton, comparing where they were when Obama/Biden took office and how worse they are today. There was nothing Biden could say.
Biden’s best response of the night was when he brought up Ryan writing the Vice-President for stimulus funds for Ryan’s constituents, where Ryan wrote that the stimulus will help create jobs – all the while saying the stimulus was bad and wouldn’t help create jobs and spark the economy.