My take on the VP debate (if you can call it that) By the Bear
The Bear on Oct 12 2012 at 8:03 am | Filed under: Election 2012, Politics
Hello, my name is Martha Raddatz and I will be your referee tonight’s match.
In this corner we have …. and in the other corner we have………
It was the most bizarre performance in any debate in memory and it was a very difficult debate to watch. I don’t see how any fair minded American voter could see Biden’s performance as anything but obnoxious and over-the top. I don’t think Biden did himself any good with his constant interruptions (he interrupted Paul Ryan 82 times during the debate) and even went as far as bullying a female moderator.
If you remember after the last debate Obama proclaimed he lost the debate because he was to polite. If the BHO administration instruction to Biden was to be uncivil, impolite, rude and aggressive then Biden delivered as ordered. If anything, Biden lost the debate because he was a complete horse’s ass.
And then Mr. VP ended the night by calling for calm, respectful, even-tempered discussions in our national debates.
Did I hear that right? Did he really say that?
If I have one criticism of Martha Raddatz, she didn’t put a halt to Biden’s constant interruptions, she should have said something like this …” Mr. Vice President, please let the gentlemen answer the question without interruptions and your will get your time to rebut when he is finished.” Other than that I thought she was fair.
It was a very difficult debate to watch and understand what anyone was saying because of the constant interruptions and talk over by Biden and if body language means anything (and it does) his smirking, laughing and giggling every time Ryan spoke was a dead giveaway he can’t defend the administration’s policies with words so he chose to be the number one heckler in the America.
Update: Biden’s Strategy: Be a Jerk By Selwyn Duke
Is there a human being on this Earth more obnoxious than Joe Biden? It appears that the following was his strategy in the vice-presidential debate:
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Okay, I’ll smile wide like a used-car salesman, shake my head and laugh while Paul Ryan is talking. This will give all watching the idea that everything he says is nonsense. The only other option is to actually support my side with real ideas, sound reasoning and appeals to virtue. I can’t do that!
The other thing I need to do is make myself look assertive, like a real alpha male, by interrupting my opponent continuously. Hey, then if TOTUS and I lose the election, anyway, I may still be able to take a leaf out of Bob Dole’s book and do commercials for male enhancement—of course, in my case it would be testosterone booster.
You know, as is so often the case in these debates, the arguments in the VP contest were a bit policy wonkish. So most viewers probably couldn’t know exactly what was true and what wasn’t. Given this, will the electorate’s judgment as to who won come down to likeability? If so, I can’t imagine that undecided voters wouldn’t have found Biden disrespectful and his personality thoroughly unappealing.
If Barack Obama’s problem in Denver was bad altitude, Biden’s was bad attitude. So while we’ll have to see what polls tell us, I myself just had the strongest urge to wipe his obnoxious smile off his face with a scouring pad and harsh detergent.
Contact Selwyn Duke
Update: Crazy Uncle Joe By Robert Stacy McCain
Democrats cheer Biden’s debate antics, but Ryan scores better overall.
Vice President Joe Biden took Americans on a one-way trip to Malarkey-ville last night, with a weirdly aggressive debate performance in which, according to one count, he interrupted his Republican rival 86 times.
Even many of those who generally approved of what Democrat spinners referred to as Biden’s “happy warrior” act expressed concern that the vice president was, to quote CNN’s Gloria Borger, “condescending at times” toward Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan.
Make that “condescending at all times,” and you may have a consensus that would include even the debate’s liberal moderator, Martha Raddatz of ABC News. Biden’s behavior resembled the hypomanic phase of bipolar disorder, as he grinned incongruously or faked laughter in reaction to Ryan’s answers, rudely scoffed at the Republican’s policy proposals as “bluster” and “loose talk,” and bulldozed past whatever feeble attempts Raddatz made to halt his repeated filibusters.
Arrogant? Overbearing? Angry? If those are your ideal qualities in a vice president, Biden’s your man.
Update: The Bully vs. the Wonk
The Veep’s strategy: Show contempt for your opponent.
So now we know what Team Obama’s comeback plan was following last week’s defeat in the Presidential debate. Unleash Joe Biden to interrupt, filibuster, snarl, smirk and otherwise show contempt for Paul Ryan. The carnival act contributed to the least illuminating presidential or vice presidential debate of our lifetimes.
From the opening bell, Mr. Biden seemed to take to heart the interpretation that President Obama offered this week of his debate performance—that he had been “too polite.” That was not a problem for the Veep, whose marching orders were clearly to steamroll the overmatched moderator Martha Raddatz and dismiss everything Mr. Ryan said with a condescending sneer.
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I’m not certain what it was that took almost two hours of our television time. Perhaps it was a sly ad for Biden’s new set of gleaming choppers, or it may have been an object lesson for all would think of moderating anything how not to perform that task. I cannot recall that any point put forth by either man was really answered and on that count Raddatz gets a great big zero. On not reining in Biden’s virtually constant vocal interruotion, she gets a minus 90 points. She earns the final minus points by not instructing the cameras to pan away from Biden while Ryan was trying to make a point.
I have heard far more meaningful discussions coming from the local schoolyard as children try to decide whether or not their foot landed on the other side of the HopScotch pattern.