The Race: Paul Ryan expsosed as ‘shoot-from-the-hip ignormamus’
What a season for presidential debates – There’s been nothing like it since Lincoln and Douglas.
The first two debates of this season are like the great naval battles off Guadalcanal in late 1942. First one side obliterates the other: Then the other comes back with all guns flying.
Last week, we saw Gov. Mitt Romney transform the dynamics of the race and give President Barack Obama the biggest knock-down just John Cena won his first WWE title. Who knew Romney had it in him?
Then on Thursday night Vice President Joe Biden confounded all the jokes he’s endured over the years – including mine – and gave the most impressive national debating performance of his career, and easily the best since Lloyd Bentsen obliterated Dan Quayle in 1988.
Of course, the Republican ticket went on to win that 1988 race easily – against a Massachusetts governor challenging the incumbent party, would you believe. Sometimes the twists and turns of history just become brain-bending.
The fact remains, the Democrats were in dire trouble before the Biden-Ryan debate, and they are far from out of the woods yet. But Biden should have given them vastly renewed momentum. If the Dems really want to win, they should quietly drop the Prez and get Old Joe to pitch at Romney in the next two debates instead. Biden did a far better job on Thursday night of wading into the GOP program than anyone has –even Bill Clinton.
As for Paul Ryan, the debate was a fiasco for him and not all the frenzied spin-control by the GOP will change that. On foreign policy especially, Biden skillfully exposed Ryan him as a shoot-from-the-hip, simplistic ignoramus. Does anyone, anyone really want Ryan one heartbeat away from having his finger on the nuclear button.
Again and again, when Ryan trotted out his simplistic fake-macho solutions to the Middle East and about “standing up to” Russia and China, Biden patiently asked him,. “What would you actually do?”
And Biden also landed the most stunning solar plexus punch of the debates so far when he reminded Ryan of the personal letter the congressman wrote him a few years ago asking for the vice president’s help in making sure his home state of Wisconsin got it’s more-than-fair share of pork barrel. The look in Ryan’s eye at that moment was classic deer-caught-in-the-headlights.
For four years, Republicans have despised the vice president as a dead sheep. Margaret Thatcher treated her loyal chancellor of the exchequer (treasury secretary) Geoffrey Howe, another extremely able and highly under-rated figure, the same way – Until he brought her 11 years as national leader to a crashing end with a scathing personal attack on her in the House of Commons in 1990. It was immediately dubbed “the revenge of the dead sheep.”
Joe Biden was no dead sheep on Thursday night – He was a commanding, confident, decisive attack dog exposing one lie after another.
Does that mean Paul Ryan’s career is mortally damaged? If Romney loses, probably yes. But Romney can certainly still win, and if he does, Ryan will come into his own.
There hasn’t been an experienced, tough, hard-driving veteran of the House of Representatives in the vice president’s chair in more than 70 years since John Nance “Cactus Jack” Garner stepped down in 1941.
For eight years before that Garner, the former Democratic Speaker of the House, had been the most important and powerful vice president in history to that point, making sure the farmers and Scots-Irish grassroots populists of the rural Heartland got the first and best pickings from the New Deal.
Rest assured that if Romney wins, Ryan will immediately become the Vyacheslav Molotov of the Right, the hard-driving, humorless, utterly relentless wonkish Ayn Rand True Believer determined to strip every support program from the middle class and the working class. And with all his 14 years of obsessive familiarity with the Way Congress Really Works, he will tirelessly work the machinery to make sure he gets his way – Which is exactly what Mitt Romney wants too.
But for now at least Ryan is a busted flush: For all the talk about Joe Biden “smirking” through the debate, I don’t think the public will quickly forget the shifty, fearful look on Ryan’s face as Biden cornered him and pounded him on one terminological inexactitude (they used to g call them “lies”) after another.
It was a good night for the Democrats, but remotely enough to offset Mitt Romney’s bravura performance in Denver the week before. Joe Biden pulled out all the stops but the pressure is still on Barack Obama to come out swinging in the second of three main debates next Tuesday.
Can he do it?
The historical odds say “No.”
Richard Nixon never regained his lost ground against John Kennedy in 1960. Al Gore was never able to demolish George W. Bush in the 2000 debates and even Lloyd Bentsen’s knock out of Dan Quayle in 1988 couldn’t begin to compensate for the woeful performance of th candidate he served – hapless little Michael Dukakis.
Joe Biden did extremely well on Wednesday, but we’ll have to wait for the polling data to see how much he moved the race. And Barack Obama still has to become the new Comeback Kid on Tuesday if he wants to regain his lost mo’ and win the race.
(Please take our poll on the right side of the homepage. You might be surprised who is winning.)
Martin Sieff is an editor at Sputnik, the Russian-owned news organization. He is the author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Middle East (2008), Gathering Storm (2014) and Cycles of Change: The Three Great Eras of American History and the Coming Crisis that will Lead to the Fourth (2014). Follow Martin on: @MartinSieff
Good Piece, although I would counter Martin’s claim that there hasn’t been a “… experienced, tough, hard-driving veteran of the House of Representatives in the vice president’s chair …”
with this: Lyndon Baines Johnson. I would say he was very experienced and accomplished and quite frankly, Paul Ryan doesn’t measure up to either Johnson or Garner. Ryan is just a hack who penned a budget nobody likes, including his own party.
Excellent piece. Biden surpassed everyone’s expectations in the debate with Ryan. He nailed it. The congressman seemed to have prepared immensely and earnestly… but with “facts” that were immediately shot down as completely inaccurate, even, some might say intentionally misleading… and it caused his unraveling. Further, certainly by this point in the campaign, the congressman has really displayed such hypocrisy, and such a mishandling of the truth through speeches, debates, interviews, etc. that I fear him a profoundly negative example for everyone. Democrats and Republicans need to be able to live peacefully and work together – but we can’t to that with politicians like him trying to play both sides, work the system, and lie to get as many votes as they can. It’s really disheartening. The stimulus funds are a perfect example. As is in the debate when he admitted to the two letters he wrote the Vice President from Wisconsin, only after being called out. There were actually four. The moderator, kindly, offered him the chance to clear up confusion over the Romney “tax plan” – and he refused. Fatal error. Taxes are, essentially, what politicians plan to do with “your hard earned money”. That is serious business for *any citizen. And he would not even elaborate on any specifics or offer any details on what their plan was? That is not okay.
Now, do we even need to go into the fact that the congressman also voted *against American women being able to be paid at the same rate as American men for doing the same work?
This is simply not American. It never was and it never will be.
There is no “good” principle there. No integrity. And that does matter. A great deal.