What a malarkey as Biden dominates VP debate

It’s all about the spin. Democrats could barely contain their relief as Joe Biden ploughed relentlessly through Thursday night’s debate, barely allowing Paul Ryan a word in edgeways. At times, he interrupted the moderator Martha Raddatz, occasionally he even interrupted himself.

But he delivered the Democrats the bolt of energy they needed after President Obama’s distinctly lacklustre encounter with Mitt Romney managed to almost completely wipe out his lead and handed the Republicans the crucial momentum they so badly needed.

Not so Joe Biden: no-one could accuse him of being weak, or polite, as he came out fighting from the very start, showing all the debating skills and experience from his 36 years in the Senate.

He launched an immediate attack on the Republicans’ policies on everything from foreign affairs to the economy, deploying all of those lines which Obama so spectacularly failed to deliver: Medicare, the auto industry bailout, Romney’s dismissal of the 47 percent of Americans as victims and takers.

His verdict on his opponent’s views could barely have been clearer: “With all due respect, that’s a bunch of malarkey”.

In fact, whenever Paul Ryan was speaking, Biden in turn scoffed, smirked, snorted and broke into laughter, a tactic the Republicans immediately seized on as rude and disrespectful, even rushing out an instant video splicing all the smirks together.

With all due respect, that’s a bunch of malarkey. Vice-President Joe Biden

But there were none of the major gaffes which some Democrats had been so concerned about, as Biden directed his appeal firmly at the middle class, interjecting at one point: “Folks, follow your instincts on this one”.

And he went after Romney’s comments on the 47 per cent: “These people are my mom and dad – the people I grew up with, my neighbours.” And as Ryan compared his own tax plans to those of John F Kennedy, Biden quipped back: “Oh, now you’re Jack Kennedy?”

Not for nothing have the pundits dubbed it the Foghorn Leghorn performance, after the rather loud and obnoxious cartoon rooster of 1950s fame.

As for Paul Ryan, he did manage to put up a creditable performance, if nothing more. He had certainly learned his stuff – a “bunch of stuff”, as Biden called it at one stage, but he simply couldn’t make much of an impact.

The smirk fest

It wasn’t for want of trying: “Mr Vice President, I know you are under a lot of duress to make up lost ground, but I think people would be better served if we don’t keep interrupting each other”, he urged.

And Ryan managed to make some strong points, swiftly accusing the Obama administration of failure over its handling of the terror attack on US diplomats in Benghazi, and accusing the Democrats of outright aggression: “If you don’t have a good record to run on, paint your opponent as someone people should run from”.

But as he tried to condemn White House support for stimulus cash as “crony capitalism”, Biden pointed out that he had asked for some of it, for his Wisconsin constituency.

“On two occasions we advocated for constituents who were applying for grants. That’s what we do”, admitted Ryan, which brought forth another of Biden’s by now trademark grins. “I love that. I love that”, he scoffed.

In the spin room at Danville, Kentucky, Democratic officials were ebullient: Obama camapaign manager Jim Messina calling Biden the “happy warrior” more than a few times, while Maryland governor Martin O’Malley said activists would be breathing a sigh of relief. “Thank goodness, the vice president is not afraid to go toe-to-toe with this guy”.

And certainly, in the immediate aftermath, party activists sent out a flurry of fundraising appeals, hoping to capitalise on this new injection of enthusiasm, relieved that the steep slide away from Obama appeared to have been stayed – for now, at least.

No-score draw

There was no similar rush on the Republican side, although they may be right in thinking that some moderate voters will have been turned off by the highly acrimonious nature of the encounter.

Instant polls were mostly united in declaring it either a draw, or a narrow win for Biden, but one thing is certain: next month’s election won’t be about Joe Biden or Paul Ryan, but Obama and Romney, the names at the top of the ticket.

And their next showdown comes on Tuesday, in a town-hall style format at New York state’s Hofstra University. If Thursday night’s scrap is anything to go by, you can bet there won’t be much politeness to go around.

Obama has already been hyping himself into a more aggressive mode, telling supporters in Florida: “After running for more than a year in which he called himself ‘severely conservative’, Mitt Romney’s trying to convince you that he was severely kidding.”

That would be the Florida where one poll last night put Romney seven points ahead.

The stakes, quite literally, couldn’t be higher. The Biden-Ryan clash has set the pattern. It’ll be all guns blazing, from here on in.

Felicity Spector writes about US politics for Channel 4 News