The person with the most at stake in last night’s Veep debate watched it at thirty-five thousand feet, and, unlike me, he presumably didn’t sneak in the odd look at how the Yankees-Orioles game was going. When Air Force One landed at Joint Base Andrews, shortly after 10:30 P.M., President Obama told pool reporters that he’d already called Joe Biden to congratulate him on his victory over Paul Ryan, adding that he couldn’t be prouder of him.

Obama didn’t describe it as a thank-you call, but what else can it have been? After the President’s weak showing in Denver, he and his followers desperately needed a lift. Biden gave them one—and how. In what may have been the most amped-up stage performance I ever seen from somebody who was sitting down—and who didn’t have the assistance of amphetamines or any other mood enhancers—the Vice-President bullied, cajoled, smiled, smirked, interrupted, fact-checked, and argued his way to what, by halfway through the debate, the majority of liberal politicos, commentators, and writers whom I follow on Twitter were calling a rout. Since one of the Vice-President’s primary tasks for the evening was to talk some of these folks in from the window ledges they’ve been sitting on for the past few days after checking the latest polls, it was certainly a triumph of sorts. Exactly what sort is less clear.

An instant poll from CBS News suggested that Biden had come out on top handily. Fifty per cent of respondents said he had won, thirty-one per cent said Ryan had won, and nineteen per cent said it was a tie. But in CNN’s equally instant poll, Ryan led Biden by forty-eight per cent to forty-four per cent. Perhaps the CNN viewers were merely channelling the views of the network’s reporters and pundits: Wolf Blitzer, John King, David Gergen, and Alex Castellanos all called it a draw.

I thought Biden was the winner, but I can see why his constant smirking and smiling while Ryan was speaking might have put off some more sensitive souls. When Fox News went to Frank Luntz’s focus group of undecided voters, one of my favorite debate-night features, three women in a row said that the Vice-President’s behavior had been irritating and disrespectful. Even my wife, who would gladly see Paul Ryan dispatched on an inaugural human mission to Mars, asked why Biden was smiling all the time and why his teeth were so white. I don’t have an answer to those questions. Nor can I solve the other great mystery of the night: how Paul Ryan can have consumed so much water without asking Martha Raddatz, the moderator, for an emergency bathroom break. The man not only climbs high mountains and runs marathons: he has a superhuman bladder.

The reason I think Biden got the best of things is straightforward. For the first hour, at least, he dominated the debate, pushing Ryan onto the defensive. Many of the points he made were telling and substantive ones—not merely bluster. Identifying a key weakness in the Republican platform, he repeatedly challenged Ryan to explain how he and Romney could pass a five-trillion-dollar income-tax cut without raising the deficit or increasing other types of taxes on middle-income Americans. “It’s mathematically impossible,” he thundered. Ryan didn’t have a convincing answer because there isn’t one. He cited six “studies” that he said had concluded that the Romney math adds up, but, as Justin Wolfers, of the University of Pennsylvania, quickly pointed out, these weren’t exactly all peer-reviewed analyses: four of them were blog posts or op-eds. Eventually, Ryan fell back on the largely discredited supply-side argument that the tax cuts would unleash growth and generate more revenues, saying that Ronald Reagan and John Kennedy had proved it could be done. To which a dismissive Biden replied. “Oh, now you’re Jack Kennedy?”

The Vice-President did almost everything that his boss had failed to do last week in Denver. He passionately defended the Administration’s economic policies, bringing up the auto bailout at the first opportunity he got; he challenged his opponent’s “facts”; he lambasted the Republican ticket’s claim to be on the side of the middle class, repeatedly citing Romney’s statement about the “forty-seven per cent”; and he called out Ryan on his own record.

When the G.O.P. congressman accused the Obama Administration of failing to provide adequate security for the late Ambassador Chris Stevens in Benghazi, Biden pointed out that in one of his budgets in the House of Representatives, Ryan had cut three hundred million dollars for embassy security. When Ryan said a pro-life Romney administration would continue to support abortions in the cases of rape, incest, and danger to the mother, Biden pointed out that Ryan had supported legislation that would have restricted abortions in some of these cases. And when Ryan said the Obama stimulus contained “ninety billion dollars in green pork,” Biden brought up two letters that Ryan had written to him, saying—these were Biden’s words—“can you send me some stimulus money for companies here in the state of Wisconsin?”

Unlike Dan Quayle many moons ago, Ryan didn’t wilt under the assault from his elder. Even when Biden mocked him about the stimulus requests, which were on behalf of his constituents, he kept his cool. “By the way, any letter you send me, I’ll entertain,” Biden quipped. To which Ryan replied, “I appreciate that, Joe.” Ryan’s answers to the foreign-policy questions, of which there were probably too many, sounded reasonably well-informed, even as they parroted the Romney/neocon line that the U.S. needs to throw around its weight, and its armed forces, more aggressively. Toward the end, when his opponent’s adrenaline rush seemed to ebb a little, Ryan scored some more points. In a closing statement that was clearly better than Biden’s, Ryan succinctly laid out the Republicans’ central message: “This is not what a real recovery looks like. You deserve better. Mitt Romney and I want to earn your support.”

Afterward, the pundits—Democrat and Republican—were virtually unanimous that Ryan had given a good account of himself. But he came in an honorable third. The silver medal went to Martha Raddatz, of ABC News, who asked pointed questions all night, and generally did a good job of keeping the two men on track. Some Republicans, Karl Rove included, were complaining about her failure to stop Biden from interrupting Ryan. That was just a sign that they thought their man was struggling. Whichever side loses usually blames the moderator.

But the night belonged to Smokin’ Joe, who came out strong and kept slugging as long as his legs would support him. In a way, he’d been preparing for this since 1988, when his first Presidential campaign was derailed by allegations of plagiarism. Biden was just forty-five then, a rising star in the Democratic Party noted for his speaking skills, his bonhomie, and his populist politics. An elder statesman now, he retains all of these attributes. I said before the debate that he was an underrated politician. Last night, he demonstrated why that’s true. The guy in the Oval Office owes him more than a phone call.

Read Amy Davidson on the abortion question and see our full coverage of the debates.

Photograph by Rick Wilking/AP.