Biden seized control of his face-off with Ryan early. Biden goes after Ryan in VP debate

DANVILLE, Ky. – Vice President Joe Biden delivered an extraordinarily aggressive, top-to-bottom attack on the Romney-Ryan ticket Thursday, repeatedly interrupting and even laughing at Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan during the lone vice presidential debate of the 2012 campaign.

The debate was a head-snapping role reversal from last week’s first presidential debate in Denver, which featured a subdued Barack Obama and a combative, insistent Mitt Romney.


( Also on POLITICO: 7 takeaways from the VP debate)

Here on the campus of Centre College, it was Biden who seized control of the event early and assailed Ryan with a stream of caustic one-liners and emotionally charged accusations against both members of the 2012 GOP ticket. He set the tone for the evening early, when Ryan rebuked the White House for not securing a U.S. diplomatic outpost in Libya.

“With all due respect, that’s a bunch of malarkey. Not a single thing he said is accurate,” Biden said, proceeding to blast Ryan for having “cut embassy security in his budget.”

When Ryan criticized the administration’s approach to Iran, warning of a “nuclear arms race in the Middle East,” the vice president could barely keep his response safe for broadcast television.

( Also on POLITICO: Vice presidential debate transcript)

“This is a bunch of stuff,” he said. Later, when Ryan cited John F. Kennedy’s tax policies, Biden slashed: “Oh, now you’re Jack Kennedy?”

Ryan, seated across a table from Biden and frequently smiling calmly amid Biden’s bombast, was comparatively restrained. He focused on a narrower set of message points that have defined the Romney-Ryan message: accusing the White House of pursuing a foreign policy of weakness and a domestic policy based on mathematically questionable tax policies anchored in class warfare.

“What we are watching on our TV screens is the unraveling of the Obama foreign policy,” Ryan said, referring to violence in Libya and across the Middle East.

Faced with a heated attack from Biden on Romney’s infamous “47 percent” comments, Ryan anchored his answer in a big-picture economic argument: “Look, did [Obama and Biden] come in and inherit a tough situation? Absolutely. But we’re going in the wrong direction. Look at where we are. The economy is barely limping along.”

( PHOTOS: Scenes from the VP debate)

The stakes for the debate were high on both sides: Biden has been under pressure to deliver a powerful general-election message after Obama’s limp performance against Romney. Ryan, meanwhile, had never performed under a spotlight as bright as this one, or faced off against a rival as potentially aggressive as Biden. The 42-year-old House Budget Committee chairman is known in Washington as an articulate defender of conservative fiscal policy, but is still in the process of introducing himself to a national audience.

Biden and Ryan met on a stage at Centre College here in Danville, in a forum moderated by Martha Raddatz, ABC’s chief international correspondent. Unlike the presidential debates — which have been designed to focus on different policy areas at each one — the face-off between the two running-mates covered both foreign and domestic policy, and anything else Raddatz chooses to bring up.

The substantive flashpoints of the debate tended to play to Biden’s strengths, more than to Ryan’s. With much of the evening devoted to foreign policy, Biden — a former chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — touted the administration’s record of fighting terrorism and heavily underscored its commitment to withdrawing troops from Afghanistan by 2014.

Ryan was at his most sure-footed on domestic policy, though there, too, an almost-hectoring Biden forced him on the defensive on the issues of entitlement reform and taxes. Pressed by both Biden and the moderator on how Romney’s pledge to cut taxes while balancing the budget might add up, Ryan pledged it’s possible to “cut tax rates by 20 percent and still preserve … important” deductions for the middle class.

Over and over, Biden’s tactic of choice was a gut-level punch at the GOP, turning to the camera at one point in an exchange over Medicare and asking viewers: “Look, folks, use your common sense: who do you trust on this?”

In the debate’s lone prominent exchange on social issues, the two candidates staked out a bright-line contrast on abortion rights — no surprise for a national campaign between Democrats and Republicans, but perhaps the most clearly articulated and unambiguous policy gap.

Ryan, whose personal position has been to oppose abortion in all cases, pledged that “the policy of a Romney administration will be to oppose abortions with the exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother.”

Biden, in his answer, noted that the balance of power on the U.S. Supreme Court could be at stake on Nov. 6: “I do not believe that we have a right to tell … women they can’t control their body. It’s a decision between them and their doctor.”

“The next president will get one or two Supreme Court nominees. That’s how close Roe v. Wade is,” he added.

It was entirely uncertain in the moments following the debate what impact — if any — it would have on the trajectory of the 2012 race. Only this was clear: that Biden’s performance, for better or worse, defined the evening as Democrats rushed to praise him as a commanding debater and the Republican National Commitee branded him “unhinged.”

A survey released Wednesday by the Pew Research Center found that Biden is viewed less favorably than Ryan by voters. Only 39 percent of registered voters said they had a favorable view of the vice president, while 51 percent had an unfavorable view.

For Ryan, those numbers were more evenly split at 44 percent favorable and 40 percent unfavorable.

The acid, confrontational tone of the evening was no surprise on either side. In an interview last week with the conservative Weekly Standard magazine, Ryan indicated that he expected some rough treatment from his opponent.

“I expect the vice president to come at me like a cannonball. He’ll be in full attack mode,” Ryan said.

Public polls taken since last week’s presidential debate have shown a competitive general-election race, with Romney ticking up a few points nationally and in several key swing states in the aftermath of his strong performance.

A wave of polling Thursday from CBS, The New York Times and Quinnipiac University, and from NBC, The Wall Street Journal and Marist College, found Romney gaining on Obama in Wisconsin, Florida and Colorado, while Obama maintained a lead in Ohio.

The polls showed a split view of the race in Virginia, with one showing Romney ahead by 1 point and the other giving Obama a 5-point edge.

Both Ryan and Biden prepared for tonight’s faceoff in mock debates: Biden trained with Budget Committee ranking Democrat Chris Van Hollen as a stand-in for Ryan, while Ryan’s Biden substitute was former Bush administration Solicitor General Ted Olson.

The two candidates at the top of the tickets — Romney and Obama — both expressed confidence in their running-mates’ debating skills. And in an interview with ABC’s Diane Sawyer, the president had a piece of advice for his garrulous second-in-command.

“I think Joe just needs to be Joe,” Obama said presciently.