At lunch yesterday, my friend Ernie Traugh and I were discussing the Biden-Ryan debate when a couple of white-haired ladies came over to our restaurant table to join the discussion.  Like Biden, they interrupted; unlike him, they weren’t (expletive deleted) about it.  Turns out they were life-long Democrats now well into their Social Security years, who saw Joe Biden as a protector of senior citizens, but not as an exemplar of good manners the night before.  One mentioned that while she had been disappointed in the President’s performance in the Denver debate, she thought Biden had gone too far in the opposite direction.

By one pundit’s count, Biden had rudely interrupted Ryan some 82 times in 90 minutes. Eye-rolling and mocking laughter was his schtick throughout.  As discussed last week, non-verbal communication is often the most powerful.  If you act like a schmuck, you poison your own message.

And then, there’s the matter of the message you’re sending.  Biden blew it on Benghazi.  Hear the voice of the intelligence community here: http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2012/10/12/Intelligence-Community-Responds-to-Biden .

Or maybe the Vice President had been too busy preparing for his debate to read that day’s Wall Street Journal.  WSJ 10/11/12

The final debate looms, with promises that President Obama will be more aggressive.  If he does it Biden’s way, it will get interesting indeed.  Meanwhile, back in Washington, one wonders if Hilary Clinton, of all people, is prepared to take a career-killing hit for the Obama team on the Benghazi matter…or whether “gun control” issues and the whole “Fast and Furious” matter will make it into the final debate.

When those two nice Democrat ladies parted from my friend and I in the restaurant, we were laughing pleasantly with each other instead of at each other. Somehow, I don’t think the next Presidential debate will come out so amicably.

Your thoughts?

 

 

1 COMMENT

  1. “the final debate looms”…

    Just an FYI…there will be TWO more Presidential debates. On Oct 16 and 22.

    As for the Benghazi, VP debate, Biden….I said this to a friend the other day. If there are two groups that you don’t want to try to throw under the bus for anything, it is the CIA and the Clinton crowd. They will retaliate I gosh darn guarantee. LOL… Hilary ain’t gonna take the fall if in fact the WH had a part of this fiasco. And the intel community has the dirt on everyone. Heck they probably know if Bo the family dog made wee wee on the rug.

  3. First sitting ambassador killed by hostile action since 1979 and our Vice President plays dumb (maybe he is not playing?).

    Hundreds of innocent lives lost at the hands of international criminals handed firearms by our government (by forcing law abiding U.S. businesses to sell to them) and only low/mid level BATF employees are made to pay.

    “Top” news organizations paint questions about all these deaths as politically motivated, fringe issues.

    Let’s hope these, along with so many other examples, do come out in the next couple of Presidential debates and the U.S. public’s collective eyes open to the danger of four more years.

  4. If the same intel apparatus that supposedly failed Uncle Joe & the O reference Benghazi is what we are depending to keep us up to date on Iran, Heaven help us!

  5. I think the two remaining presidential debates will have no effect short of Obama accusing Romney of Child Molestation and being the brains behind the embassy attack. I am not expecting the same amount of people watching both debates as the first one.
    There is a serious smell of panic coming from the Dem side. Expect some October surprises somewhere else.

  6. Biden was rude and disrespectful. I thought Ryan was a little too reserved, he could have attacked a little more. I am feeling better about the next 5 weeks but am still worried our government is too big.

  7. It’s funny how people can see things differently. What others saw as rude in Biden, I saw as refreshingly candid. I agree that he interrupted too much, but at the same time, I was thrilled that there was some actual back-and-forth in this debate, instead of two people standing before podiums taking turns delivering talking points. I think the table-style format encouraged a more conversational tone, and interruption and interjection is part of that. But yeah, Biden did it a lot, and a lot more than Ryan. On the flip-side, I would be interested to see a break-down of who got more time to speak. There were times when I was surprised at how long Ryan was being allowed to go on, but I wasn’t sitting there with a stopwatch, and these things can be very subjective.

    I will fall out of my seat if Fast and Furious is even mentioned in any of the presidential debates. As much as it is a political hot potato, it is far too much of a “real” issue to ever get airtime in a forum like this. It has barely gotten any airtime in “news” networks! I think that it is way under most Americans’ radar, as egregious as it is. I doubt most Americans would know what anybody was talking about.

  8. Biden is a clown trying to play The Joker. Ryan gave a decent performance, despite Biden’s constant and intentionally disrespectful distractions. Regarding Biden’s and Obama’s claim that they were unaware of the lack of security in Libya or the requests for reinforcements; this very well could be true since both Biden and Obama have spent their time (that would be most of the 4+ years) campaigning rather than attending intelligence briefings. This president would rather gather his intelligence from “The View”. Good luck with that. The facts should defeat Obama and the polls look very favorable now but I worry most about the expected malfeasance in the voting process.

  9. I keep getting the feeling that Bengahzi was “allowed” to happen and quickly spun out of control like “Fast & Furious”. Too many sins of omission.

  10. Biden showed a complete lack of respect for all the citizens of the United States. Laughing while discussing the murder of our ambassador and 3 others is despicable, at best. Laughing while discussing the 23 million unemployed and an out of control deficit spending program is moronic and out of place, no matter what the reason or venue. He showed no compassion for anyone but himself and the hussein, and what money and power they can amass.

  11. I read Bill already is talking to lawyers on behalf of Hillery. The Chicago thugs against the Clintonistas , could be interesting.

    How’s Ernie doing? Well I hope.

  12. I have a hunch that Tuesday night Obama is going to come out swinging and the moderator will let him. Hopefully, Romney will be able to deflect and maybe get in some zingers. I did not watch the first Pres. debate but did DVR the vice debate. Bidet was obnoxious. If I was Ryan, I would have told Bidet that I would have more respect for him if he would not interrupt. The moderator was clearly in Bidet’s corner. I wish that they would limit the rules to just 3 topics for 90 minutes and the moderator would be there to just keep them on topic. If they don’t then cut their mikes off.

  13. Mas, on second thought, are you sure these weren’t just a couple of senior citizen ladies hitting on a couple of handsome young men? I have heard of stranger pickup lines than politics.

  14. Very disrespectful towards Congressman Ryan who held his ground. Biden certainly did not behave Presidential and someone who you would want to take over the country in the event of an emergency and on the other hand Ryan did.

  15. Biden was a jerk, no question. I did think that he came across as more believable than Ryan, especially when Ryan made that joke about Biden’s poor word choice. Ryan’s facts were better, but he wasn’t as convincing as he needed to be. He probably would have had a better chance if he’d been allowed to present his views uninterrupted, but he simply couldn’t distill his presentations into laymen’s terms.
    You could see him struggling with the issue of the withdrawal from Afghanistan as Joe pounded on the fact that our troops were being replaced by locals. Ryan is better placed as a policy guy in sound bites than in an open forum. He seemed focused on pushing the GOP talking points rather than directly rebutting some of Biden’s statements, which lent him less credibility.
    It’s a shame. It’s one thing to lack respect for your opponent. It’s another to completely lack respect for the process and by extension the voters watching the debate. Ryan deserved a chance to succeed or fail on his own merits and he wasn’t given that chance…which was probably the point.

  17. I am sure that Biden did just as he was coached…smirking, laughing, raising his hands in the air and lowering his head and shaking it “no”. All attempts in non-verbal communication to denigrate the cooents and points Ryan was making. His constant interruptions as Ryan was trying to make his arguements was another tactic in an attempt to blunt Ryan’s (and Romney’s) message. And how many times did Biden look into the camera and say “Who do you trust?” That is really a question he shouldn’t have asked. Obama vs Romney? Obama is no debater. The round table might be a slightly better forum for him, but without his teleprompter and a prepared list of softball questions, I still think Romney will chew him up and spit him out.

  19. “White-haired ladies” huh? I’ve heard of guys “Robbing the cradle”, but “Robbing the bingo parlor” instead? Did you buy those ladies a
    couple glasses of Geritol?

    I watched both the debates and it was no surprise that in the first one, our Dear Leader didn’t have much to say, considering he had no teleprompter to read from, so had no good responses to Mitt Romney’s charges. As for the second debate, that’s par for biden who has always been an obnoxious jerk. At least give him credit for not saying something really stupid like he usually does. He is a fairly convincing liar since he has so much practice fibbing and telling tall tales during his long political career. Much has been said about Joe the Joker’s confidence and knowledge, but making up ‘facts’ as he goes along and expounding them rigorously doesn’t require much skill. Most of what biden said during the debate was factually challenged or downright lying through his very white dentures.

    As for HillBilly, will the female half of that evil team fall on her sword for the Anointed One? Most likely some unfortunate bureacrat at the State Department will be made the scapegoat and transfered to another department within that organization with a hefty salary raise to keep mum about the embassy fiasco in Libya. Or maybe the Messiah will just blame the murder of our ambassador and three other brave Americans on Bush
    and Cheney or now, Romney and Ryan. With so many voting age idiots in this country, the Dear Leader could pull it off again and get four more years to complete the destruction of our once great nation.

  20. Biden had a huge gaffe in there, if anyone will pick up on it. Syria SIX TIMES bigger than Libya? Look at a map; Libya’s the much larger country, though smaller in population. If Ryan had said that, the media would be baying for his head right up to election day!

  21. If Biden’s goal was to “supress viewership” he succeeded. Millions fewer viewers watched this debate than the last one VP Debate. Did the Veep intend for viewers to tune out? I think so. As a result Biden probably significantly reduced the numbers of independent voters hearing Congressman Ryan’s comments. If they didn’t hear him, they can’t be influenced by him. And when you are in Biden’s situation of not having anything good to say about his and the President’s record, he was probably smart to try to get folks to not listen to what Congressman Ryan had to say.

  22. The only thing the Progressive Democrats will protect is their goal of taking control of virtually everything in our lives. The Obama fans need to wake up look at what these people are really dedicated to.

  23. unfortunatly Obama will be re-elected, because the POTUS is elected by the Electoral College and not the populous. (ask ALL Gore how that works).

    The Electoral College is predominently democrat, Obama will win.

    Here in CA, if every vote was for someone else our Electoral College Reps will vote for Oh’bummer

  24. VEEP debates make no sense to me given that the vice-president, constitutionally, is supposed to be the second highest winner of electoral votes, which would have made McCain the VEEP. In that way everyone is represented. I’m not sure exactly when that changed but I’m fairly certain that the election is for a President.

    I’ll have to look this up.

  25. IMHO, it was the the same lies, finger pointing, and grandstanding, that we come to expect from both political parties. These big party, baby boomer philosophies of continous non-stop exponential growth continues to pile up debt for the future generations.

  26. The Obama-ites are not Democrats…

    I don’t know what they are, but they’re not Democrats. Definitely NOT Kennedy-style Democrats.