Vice President Joe Biden and Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin tangled over the Middle East, the economy and Medicare in a scrappy back-and-forth at their debate Thursday night.
It was a remarkably lively exchange of scoffing, eye-rolling, smirking and mocking laughter as the vice presidential rivals argued at a table in the 90-minute faceoff at Centre College in Danville, Ky.
Responding to a question on the fatal attack last month on the U.S. diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, Biden assailed Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney on a range of national security matters.
"Whatever mistakes were made will not be made again," Biden said of the attack in Libya before pivoting to Romney's support of the war in Iraq.
Biden credited President Barack Obama for ending the Iraq war, saying Romney thought "we should have left 30,000 troops there." He faulted Romney for objecting early on to Obama setting a 2014 deadline for withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan, and for saying he "wouldn't move heaven and earth" to capture Osama bin Laden.
"The president of the United States has led with a steady hand and clear vision," Biden said. "Governor Romney, the opposite. The last thing we need now is another war."
Ryan, the Republican nominee for vice president, said he mourned the death of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in the Libya attack, then criticized Obama's response to the attack.
"It took the president two weeks to acknowledge that this was a terrorist attack," the Wisconsin congressman said. (Obama labeled the incident an "act of terror" during his remarks on Sept. 12 in the White House Rose Garden.)
Ryan said a Romney administration would provide Marines protecting an outpost like the one in Benghazi.
"If we're hit by terrorists, we're going to call it for what it is — a terrorist attack," he said.
Ryan also castigated Obama's administration for its evolving accounts of the Libya attack. "This is becoming more troubling by the day," he said.
The opening exchange came after moderator Martha Raddatz of ABC News asked Biden whether there was a "massive intelligence failure" in the Libya incident.
Turning to Iran, Ryan called Obama ineffective on foreign policy while Biden, shown on a split screen on television, laughed silently and shook his head.
"This administration has no credibility on this issue," Ryan said of Iran's nuclear program. "It's because this administration watered down sanctions, delayed sanctions, tried to stop us from putting the tough sanctions in place."
Ryan also criticized Obama for not agreeing to meet with Benjamin Netanyahu while he was in New York City for a United Nations meeting, but appearing the same day on ABC's "The View."
"This is a bunch of stuff," Biden said.
"What does that mean, 'a bunch of stuff?'" Raddatz asked.
"It's Irish," Ryan chimed in. "We Irish call it malarkey," Biden responded.
Biden said Obama had been on an hourlong call with Netanyahu before the Israeli prime minister headed to the United Nations, and criticized Romney for not laying out a solid plan on Iran.
"Facts matter, Martha," Biden told the moderator.
When Raddatz moved on to the economy, Biden went back on the attack, bringing up Romney's comments on 47 percent of Americans being dependent on government. Defending Obama for the auto industry bailout, Biden said Romney had wanted to let Detroit go bankrupt.
"But it shouldn't be surprising for a guy who says 47 percent of the American people are unwilling to take responsibility for their own lives," Biden said.
(Romney did not actually make the comment about Detroit going bankrupt. It was a headline that a newspaper editor placed on an op-ed essay that Romney wrote.)
"I've had it up to here with this notion that 47 percent — it's about time they take some responsibility here. And instead of signing pledges to Grover Norquist not to ask the wealthiest among us to contribute to bring back the middle class, they should be signing a pledge saying to the middle class, we're going to level the playing field. We're going to give you a fair shot again."
Ryan responded that the country was going in the wrong direction, reminding Biden that the unemployment rate of his own hometown had grown to 10 percent from 8.5 percent since Obama took office.
"Twenty-three million Americans are struggling for work today," Ryan said. "Fifteen percent of Americans are living in poverty today. This is not what a real recovery looks like," he said.
He went on to tell a story about Romney meeting a struggling family and offering to pay for a student's college education out of his own pocket.
With polls showing a spike in support for Romney over the last week, the stakes were high for Biden. He faced pressure to undo damage inflicted on the Democratic ticket by Obama with his flat performance in the debate with Romney last week in Denver; Obama later called it a "bad night."
For Ryan, the debate was a chance to build on the momentum that Romney has gained.
After weeks of preparation, the rival running mates were braced for a combative encounter split between domestic and foreign affairs. Rather than a formal setting of twin lecterns, the two were seated at a table with Raddatz, a veteran foreign correspondent.
Both candidates faced pitfalls.
An imperative for Biden was to avert the sort of gaffes that have knocked Obama's campaign off-stride several times — most recently, his comment that the middle class had been "buried" for the last four years.
Biden, 69, served as a U.S. senator from Delaware for 36 years, with stints as chairman of the Judiciary and Foreign Relations committees.
For Ryan, 42, Thursday's debate provided a forum to show he could step in as president, if needed. But a key goal was to avoid statements like the ones in his Republican convention speech that drew poor marks from nonpartisan fact checkers and gave Democrats fodder against the Republican ticket on the auto industry bailout and other topics.
Also challenging for Ryan: How to navigate between the conservative agenda that he has championed in Congress and the more moderate tone that Romney has tried to strike in appeals to swing voters.
As chairman of the House Budget Committee, Ryan has been the Republican Party's leading voice on fiscal matters. The austere federal budget proposals that he authored have been prime targets for Democrats in campaigns across the nation.
Normally, running-mate debates have minimal impact, despite legendary moments such as Lloyd Bentsen's cutting "you're no Jack Kennedy" insult of Dan Quayle in 1988 and Bob Dole's remark to Walter Mondale in 1976 about troops killed in "Democrat wars." More than three decades of polling show vice presidential debates to be largely irrelevant to election results, Gallup reported this week.
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