(CNN) This year's presidential contest was a substance-free spectacle, Vice President Joe Biden lamented on Thursday.

"This has been a very tough election. It's been ugly, it's been divisive, it's been coarse, it's been dispiriting. And it was more a battle of personalities than it was a battle of ideas in my view," Biden told a crowd at a post-election forum convened by New York University in Washington.

"I find myself embarrassed by the nature of the way in which this campaign was conducted," he said. "So much for the shining city on the hill," he said.

In his talk, Biden characterized the election as devoid of policy or discussions of governance.

"Why wasn't there more discussion?" he asked. "Hillary Clinton was the single most qualified on the fact of it to run for president of the United States that we've had, period. It wasn't that she didn't have all these ideas. She did. But the press, you didn't cover it."

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