Five things we learned from Thursday's vice presidential debate
By Peter Hamby, Mark Preston and Paul Steinhauser, CNN
updated 7:22 AM EDT, Fri October 12, 2012
Danville, Kentucky (CNN) -- Vice President Joe Biden and Republican Paul Ryan, the
man who wants his job, exchanged fire over taxes, Medicare, national security
and some animated facial expressions in their only debate before Election Day.
Here
are five things we learned from Thursday night:
1. Biden brought it
We
expected Ryan, not Biden to bring a three-ring binder full of facts and figures
to the debate. It's not that the data-driven Ryan didn't show up with an arm
full of his statistics; it is just that Biden did so as well.
And Biden's aggressive
offense from the very beginning drowned out Ryan until about 45 minutes into
the debate.
Biden's
36 years in the Senate served him well Thursday night. Who says that delivering
hundreds of floor speeches on Capitol Hill isn't useful? The vice president
also proved wrong the critics, who predicted he was going to make a gaffe. He
didn't.
In
many ways, Biden stole a page from Mitt Romney's debate playbook: put your head
down, charge forward and don't stop. Romney effectively employed this strategy
last week and Barack Obama was never able to recover. While Ryan put up a fight
last night, he, too, was unable to regain his footing.
An
Obama-Biden campaign official said before the debate that the vice president's
goal was to try and compare and contrast the two competing campaign's vision
for the future. Whether you agree or disagree with the specifics of the Obama-Biden
or Romney-Ryan plans, Biden did a better job of selling his last night.
It
will be several days until we know if this debate has helped the Obama-Biden
campaign stem the political bleeding. But Biden did what he needed to do.
2. Too much Joe?
If
Biden was on a mission to bring the fight to Ryan, then it appeared to be
mission accomplished for the vice president.
Moments
into the debate, Biden went on the attack.
"On
Iraq, the president said he
would end the war. Gov. Romney said that was a tragic mistake," said
Biden.
Minutes
later the vice president pushed back against criticism by the Wisconsin congressman, saying
"not a single thing he said is accurate."
And
he called other accusations by Ryan "a bunch of stuff."
Biden
went where President Barack Obama wouldn't last week in his debate with Romney,
bringing up Romney's "47%" controversy as well as the Republican
nominee's tax rate.
And
later, when Ryan discussed President John F. Kennedy's tax policies, Biden
fired back: "Oh, now you're Jack Kennedy?"
"The
vice president came and showed fight. He showed his boss what it is to engage
and engage and engage and attack and attack and attack," said CNN Chief
National Correspondent John King.
"I
think Joe Biden did do his boss a lot of help," agreed Senior CNN
Political Analyst David Gergen, who's advised both Democratic and Republican
presidents.
But
was Biden too aggressive?
"I
think Joe Biden is an authentic person. He speaks his mind. People know him.
They expect that," Obama senior adviser David Axelrod said. "I think
that authenticity is something that people appreciate."
The
Romney campaign disagreed.
"The
sighing, the eye-rolling, the grinning. I don't know if the vice president knew
that there was a camera on him the whole time, that there was a split
screen," senior Romney campaign adviser Russ Schriefer said. "Even if
we thought he was making good points, I think that they stepped on his good
points. He was trying to cram everything in that he could that wasn't in the
last debate to try and get it all out at once. But I don't think he made any
kind of coherent argument as to why the Obama-Biden ticket should be
re-elected."
Gergen
agreed: "On style I think that Paul Ryan won the debate. The Biden
dismissive laughs, the interruptions, the sort of shouting, I think that Ryan
was calmer and frankly more presidential."
What
did debate watchers think? Seven out of 10 debate watchers in a CNN/ORC International poll said that Biden was the aggressor.
3. Does the debate even matter?
The
short answer is no.
People
don't vote for vice presidents at the ballot box. They vote for presidents.
Past vice presidential debates, no matter how high the drama, have ultimately
done little to move the needle in modern elections.
Not
surprisingly, Biden's scenery-chewing performance was viewed differently by
both campaigns. The Romney campaign said he looked erratic, rude and unhinged.
The Obama campaign said he laid out the facts and made Ryan look, in the spin
room words of former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, "like a lightweight."
But
a common refrain from both campaigns after the debate was that it will probably
have a minimal effect on the race one way or the other.
The
biggest impact of the night, and the reason Democrats were ebullient after the
debate, was the base-rallying impact of Biden's aggressive and blustery stage
presence.
In
the wake of Obama's wilting flower routine in last week's debate, the full
Biden, exasperated and angry with Romney and Ryan, was just what Democrats
needed.
How
happy was team Obama? Campaign surrogates stayed in the spin room with puffed
chests for much longer than they did in Denver, when they offered
dubious messaging before escaping. The campaign immediately sent out a
fundraising plea. President Obama put himself in front of cameras after landing
at Andrews Air Force Base to praise Biden's performance.
And
it wasn't just the Obama camp.
Democratic
state parties, liberal interest groups and down-ballot campaigns rushed to send
out fundraising e-mails to capitalize on a fired-up base. You didn't see much
of the same on the Republican side.
The
debate launched a fresh news cycle that will put a temporary halt to the "Chicago in disarray"
storylines. Now the pressure is on President Obama to keep that narrative going
next week in New York.
4. Ryan rises to challenge
It
was arguably Ryan's biggest task in the vice presidential debate.
As
the running mate to the Republican challenger, Ryan needed to convey that he's
fit to serve should something happen to the commander in chief, that he would
be acceptable to Americans as president.
Known
as an expert on economic and budget issues, early in the debate Ryan showed his
smarts on foreign policy. During a discussion on troop drawdowns in Afghanistan, he explained how the
seasonal changes affect the fighting in Afghanistan.
"The
mountain passes fill in with snow. The Taliban and the terrorists and the Haqqani
and the Quetta Shura come over from Pakistan to fight our men and
women. When it fills in with snow, they can't do it. That's what we call
fighting seasons. In the warm months, fighting gets really high. In the winter,
it goes down," explained Ryan.
"And
so when Adm. Mullen and Gen. Petraeus came to Congress and said, if you pull
these people out before the fighting season ends, it puts people more at risk.
That's the problem."
"I
think Ryan proved himself unexpectedly competent on foreign policy," said
Republican strategist and CNN contributor Alex Castellanos, who worked for
Romney's 2008 presidential bid. "I think Ryan met his test tonight. Ryan
looked very reasonable."
As
expected, the Obama campaign disagreed.
"I
think Congressman Ryan was out of his depth and showed clearly the ticket is
not ready for prime time on foreign policy, and I think that was a decisive
difference between the two sides," said Obama campaign manager Jim
Messina.
So
what do debate watchers think? Did Ryan pass the competency test?
Six
out of 10 debate watchers in the CNN/ORC poll conducted said that Ryan is
qualified to be president.
5. Malarkey moves numbers
"Malarkey"
is one of Biden's favorite Biden-isms.
He's
been saying it for decades, but not usually with the kind of gusto he showed on
Thursday before millions of prime time television viewers.
Soon
after the debate began, when Ryan criticized the Obama administration's foreign
policy, Biden fired back: "With all due respect, that's a bunch of
malarkey."
What
does malarkey mean?
People
apparently rushed to their computers to find out. "Malarkey," it
turns out, was the third-most-searched debate-related term of the night on
Google. It was also trending on Twitter for a good chunk of time.
For
the record: it's basically the Irish-American term for "nonsense."
According
to Google, the other top searches during the debate were "Biden,"
"conflating," "Who is winning the debate" and "How old
is Paul Ryan."
