DANVILLE, Ky. (AP) -
In a spirited debate that laid out stark
choices, Joe Biden and Paul Ryan teed up pointed arguments on the
economy, social policy and America's place in the world that President
Barack Obama and GOP rival Mitt Romney now will drive forward into the
campaign's final stretch.
With just 25 days to go in
Campaign 2012 and throngs of people already voting, Obama and Romney
will try to answer two questions that their running mates posed to the
tens of millions of Americans who watched Thursday's hard-fought,
90-minute debate.
"Who do you trust?" Biden asked.
"Wouldn't it be nice to have a job-creator in the White House?" asked Ryan.
Biden, eager to make up for
the president's lackluster performance in his first debate with Romney,
played the aggressor throughout. And the president gave his running
mate a quick thumbs up for delivering with the energy and feeling that
he did not.
"His passion for making
sure that the economy grows for the middle class came through so I'm
really proud of him," Obama said after watching the debate aboard Air
Force One on the way home after a day of campaigning in battleground
Florida.
Ryan came back at the vice
president with harsh talking points, a flurry of statistics and a sharp
economic warning: In another Obama term, he said, "Watch out, middle
class, the tax bill's coming to you."
Romney, who watched the
debate at the end of a campaign day in North Carolina, got on the phone
to Ryan immediately afterward to congratulate his running mate.
Now attention shifts to the
two remaining debates between Obama and Romney: Tuesday's "town hall"
style faceoff in Hempstead, N.Y., and a final showdown, over foreign
policy, on Oct. 22 in Boca Raton, Fla.
And the campaigns get right
back into the thick of it on Friday, looking for ways large and small
to shift more voters their direction in the small number of states whose
electoral votes are still up for grabs: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Ohio,
New Hampshire, Nevada, North Carolina, Virginia and Wisconsin.
Look for Romney in Virginia
and then linking up with Ryan in Ohio. Biden and wife Jill will woo
young voters at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. Obama will spend a
rare day in Washington, preparing for the next two debates and taking
campaign contest winners out to eat.
With so little time left in
the countdown to Nov. 6, "every day, every hour counts," said Rahm
Emanuel, the Chicago mayor who served as Obama's first White House chief
of staff. "Everything counts."
The president has set aside
a serious chunk of time for preparation after being faulted for
underestimating the importance of his first debate with Romney. He'll be
hunkered down in Williamsburg, Va., from Saturday until Tuesday
rehearsing, with Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass, acting as a proxy for Romney.
Romney's return to Ohio
this weekend signals the importance of a state seen by both sides as the
decisive to the whole election. Obama holds the edge there.
Obama had to hope that
Biden's solid showing on Thursday was enough to shift a campaign dynamic
that has had the momentum moving Romney's way since the first debate.
Romney, for his part, had to hope that Ryan's performance would keep up
the good karma for the GOP.
The running mates clearly
sensed that the stakes were higher than usual for their faceoff, and
both played hardball throughout, frequently interrupting one another and
challenging one another's assertions.
On television's split
screens, Biden's body language - a montage of pained smiles, winces,
head shakes and eye rolls - often screamed incredulity when Ryan was
speaking.
"I know you're under a lot
of duress to make up for lost ground," Ryan shot back at Biden at one
point, "but I think people would be better served if we don't keep
interrupting each other."
In one of the night's lighter moments, Ryan helpfully provided a translation of one of Biden's putdowns.
"This is a bunch of stuff," Biden said of Ryan's dismissive characterization of the president's Iran policy.
"What does that mean, a bunch of stuff?" asked moderater Martha Raddatz of ABC News.
"It's Irish," Ryan offered.
"It is," Biden agreed, to laughter from the audience. "We Irish call it malarkey."
At another point, Ryan used
Biden's own history of gaffes to explain away Romney's much-criticized
comment dismissing the 47 percent of Americans who pay no taxes, a
comment that Biden brought up repeatedly after Obama had failed to
mention it in his debate.
"I think the vice president very well knows that sometimes the words don't come out of your mouth the right way," Ryan said.
There were spirited
exchanges on taxes, abortion, Medicare, Libya, and more. It may not have
broken new ground, but the conversation gave viewers a clear
illustration of the sharp choices before them come Election Day.
"In case you haven't
noticed, we have strong disagreements," Biden said in his closing
statement. And then he distilled the Democrats' campaign pitch into a
simple bid to give anxious Americans "a little bit of peace of mind."
Ryan then spoke of the "big choice" in this election, and argued that Obama had his chance and failed.
"This is not what a real recovery looks like," he said. "You deserve better."
For all of the political
back-and-forth that's transpired over the past two months, the race
essentially stands where it was in August, before the two national
political conventions, with the two candidates running about even in
national polls.
There's been no shortage of
drama in between: the revelation of Romney's caught-on-tape comment
about the 47 percent, Biden's remark that the middle class has been
"buried" in the past four years, Obama's weak showing in the first
debate, the ongoing tussle over the administration's handling of the
attack that left four Americans dead in Benghazi, Libya, and more.
With turnout critical, both
campaigns are devoting considerable energy to ensuring that supporters
are registered to vote and taking advantage of the early voting options
that are available in many states. Nearly a million Americans have
already voted.
The Democrats' month-long
"gotta vote" bus tour will be in Milwaukee on Friday, just in time to
rev up supporters for the opening of Wisconsin's early voting season on
Monday.
And both sides are keeping
up the push for campaign contributions to keep the battleground-state
airwaves full of political ads. Within a few hours of the debate,
Romney, Obama and Biden all were out with emails to their supporters,
asking for more cash.
