Ryan Less Decisive Than Romney

     The one and only vice-presidential debate was held last night in Danville, Kentucky. It was moderated by ABC News' Martha Raddax, who showed more bias than Jim Lehrer when he moderated the first presidential debate last week. Ms. Raddax, at times seemed as though she was teaming up with Vice-President Joe Biden against  the Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan. The debate covered topics on domestic and foreign policy and was broken into 9 segments. Each candidate had two minutes to answer each question and then time was allotted for a brief discussion between the candidates.
     At times the discussion was chaotic and the Vice-President was allowed to interrupt Paul Ryan almost at will. I scored a win for Congressman Ryan, albeit not as decisive as the one Mitt Romney had against Barrack Obama in last week's presidential debate. The opening question was in reference to the ongoing foreign policy debacle in Benghazi, Libya. The Vice-President towed the administration's line and threw the intelligence community under the bus. Representative Ryan did an adequate job framing the issue as an administration failure. In addition to interrupting Paul Ryan many times, Joe Biden often made faces as Paul Ryan was speaking, which made the Vice-President look childish and rude. Joe Biden also appeared angry and aggressive, while Paul Ryan was calm but assertive.
     There were some moments of levity as evidenced by Paul Ryan's response to Joe Biden clumsily trying to make political hay out of Mitt Romney's off the cuff remark about the 47% of Americans who do not pay Federal income tax. Paul Ryan said that he was sure the Vice-President understood that words don't always come out of your mouth the way you want them to. This, of course, is a reference to the almost daily gaffs committed by Joe Biden. The Vice-President also repeated the now thoroughly discredited assertion that Romney/Ryan want to cut taxes on the wealthy by 5 Trillion dollars, an accusation the President had made three times in last week's debate to no avail due to Mitt Romney's masterful handling of the issue. Congressman Ryan did not address this issue as directly as Mitt Romney did in his debate, which was disappointing to me. I thought Paul Ryan's closing statement was very strong and in sharp contrast to Joe Biden's weak-kneed defense of one of the worst administrations in modern history.
     In the final analysis, Ryan won but I don't think either side will lose or gain much as a result of the debate last night. The win was not decisive enough that the left can't spin it into a tie or even a win for Joe Biden. I think in the grand scheme of the campaign, especially after the next two presidential debates, this debate probably won't have much effect on the outcome of the election.