Biden vs Ryan: After Barack Obama’s “drubbing in Denver”, the onus was on his running mate Joe Biden to redeem the Democratic pride at his debate with Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan. On 11 October at Danville, Kentucky, Biden was at home talking about foreign policy and Medicare and Ryan spoke about the government spending and what he proposes.
Ryan made some well-guided attacks on the failure of intelligence and security over the Benghazi terror attacks on September 11 to which Biden said that Romney’s response was quite ‘unpresidential’. At a time when there’s talk that Obama hopes to win by default, Ryan cashed in on that. “You have a President who ran on hope and change who has now turned his campaign into attack, blame and defame,” said the Wisconsin congressman. “If you don’t have a record to run on, you paint your opponent as someone to run from.”
“With all due respect, that’s a bunch of malarkey,” the vice president retorted. On taxes, Biden tried to drive the home his point that Mitt Romney and Ryan are not being honest about their plan to reduce taxes on the middle class.
According to a New Republic piece on the debate, Biden clinched it when he criticised the Romney-Ryan plan on Medicare saying it “jeopardise the guarantee of benefits that the program has provided since its creation in 1965”. He also reminded voters about the 2011 Ryan Medicare plan, which would have left a senior citizen individually responsible for two-thirds of his or her medical costs. Ryan had his moments too. He assailed the Obama administration’s dithering on clamping down on Iran despite its scaled up nuclear capabilities. “A nuclear-armed Iran, which triggers a nuclear arms race in the Middle East” is the worst possible outcome, he said on Thursday. “This is the world's largest sponsor of terrorism.”
He also had choicest of words for Obama’s handling of the economy, “Look, did they 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. It’s growing at 1.3 percent. That’s slower than it grew last year and last year was slower than the year before.” Canada’s Globe and Mail newspaper observed that Ryan promised that a Romney administration would allow for abortion in cases of rape, incest and where the life of the mother is endangered, which is quite a departure from the Republican ethos.
In a nutshell, Biden won the debate on theatrics front while Ryan is a winner for his silver tongued arguments. In the end it is more or less a tie as this CNN Poll clearly illustrates
