I watched the VP debate for the second time tonight since my wife hadn’t seen it during the day and I came away even more than before with the strong impression that Paul Ryan heavily took it out. He came across as someone with cool and judgement, someone with the gravitas and seriousness to be the president if he had to. He had thought about the issues and if he were called upon to decide on some matter, looks perfectly able to sort through the options he might be given with a genuine capability to properly weigh matters up.

Biden was the reverse. He struck me as crude and shallow, lacking in a genuine ability to see an issue through to the end. Nor did he give me that comfortable feeling that he would be able to take a difficult decision in which there might be a host of considerations to weigh up. And his laugh track was so irritating that you really do wonder whether he is psychologically unbalanced. It was obviously the strategy for him to smile and smile and be a villain yet, but if that was supposed to be a winning pose it worked for me not at all.

Before the debate I had written that:

Biden is wily and been around the traps for quite a while. He is practised in the art of politics which makes him a formidable opponent and not someone to let one’s guard down against for a moment. Though he lied and misrepresented from one end of the debate to the other, in my remembrance of the time he was more than a match for Sarah Palin and Paul Ryan is new at the game. Ryan has a number of potential problems in front of him – he may be too wonkish, he may sound too much like he intends to slash and burn and he is coming in against an expectation that will work against him if at the end of the night Biden has been able to hold his own. For all that, Ryan understands the issues within an inch of his life and Biden does not.

In the end, that’s still how it looked to me. Biden said whatever he thought might sound best on the night and truth be damned. He therefore came away with a superficial plausibility but struck me as someone of no substance. Ryan in contrast played it straight, obviously fortified by his deep knowledge of the issues and his commitment to the positions he took.

The test for me is this. If I were considering which of the two I would want to sit down with Vladimir Putin in some negotiation where some vital interest was at stake, there is no doubt that I would prefer it was Ryan at the table. On this, if there’s doubt for you, there’s none for me at all.

Some further thoughts: In my view the difference in the debate and which affected Paul Ryan is the difference between talking to an audience that knows the facts and the general public that does not. Ryan’s experience comes from discussion in the House where it is difficult to get away with untruths and misstatements for very long. The unemployment rate went down below eight percent for the first time in 43 months – hardly a worthy test of economic competence – and even then the number had the look of a fiddle as has been noted. Anyway, as the Washington Post further noted, the data also showed “the biggest increase in so-called underemployed Americans since February 2009, during the depths of the Great Recession.” Loved the “so-called” since it is a stat in the same league as the unemployment rate.

Meanwhile Iran really is moving closer to the bomb and whatever nonsense there may be about Iran being “more isolated” than ever, it will make hardly an ounce of difference since even North Korea has the bomb and no one is more isolated than they are. And if you’re not scared about that what does scare you? Romney often talks about a suitcase bomb in New York against which there would be no defence.

And the bit about tax cuts for the rich, it is necessary to understand the American system which means that to raise this rate will raise taxes on a multitude of small firms.

Ryan’s problem – a general problem for Republicans – is that they assume a higher level of knowledge and a better comprehension of the issues. The Democrats, like all the parties of the left, stick to the P.T. Barnum Principle, there’s a sucker born every minute. With population growth being what it is, we’re down to one every ten seconds and the numbers are growing.

This was a pretty famous picture on the day that Obama was elected back in 2008. The fellow on Hilary’s right is Jon Favreau who is to this minute Director of Speechwriting for President Barack Obama. “He has been named,” as his Wikipedia entry puts it, “one of the ‘100 Most Influential People in the World’ by Time magazine.” Yet as the text that goes with the picture puts it, “there he is, groping the breast of a cardboard cutout of Hillary Rodham Clinton as an unnamed pal wearing an ‘Obama staff’ T-shirt kisses and feeds her beer.”

By these standards, Julia Gillard has had a pretty tame time of it. If she would like some idea of what misogyny looks like, she should have a look at these chaps from the Obama administration instead.

Incredible if these really are Biden’s reactions to Ryan’s statements. My own view, Ryan was more presidential than either Biden and Obama and our future would be a lot more secure in his hand than in theirs.

This is a reply by Mitt Romney to the insane allegation from Obama’s spokeswoman, Stephanie Cutter, that the inquiries taking place over the murder of the American ambassador in Benghazi are occurring only because it has been politicised by Romney and Ryan.

President Obama’s campaign today said that Libya is only an issue because of Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan. They’re wrong. The reason it is an issue is because, for the first time since 1979, an American ambassador was assassinated and President Obama’s foreign policy strategy of ‘leading from behind’ is failing. This administration has continually misled the American public about what happened in Benghazi and, rather than be truthful about the sequence of events, has instead skirted responsibility and dodged questions. The American people deserve straight answers about this tragic event and a president who can provide leadership, not excuses.

How anyone can not think of this as a major political issue is beyond me. That they would rather suppress such debate shows they understand perfectly well just how far knowing the facts of what took place discredits this administration, but that is the last reason that it should not be discussed right now. The month before an election is the perfect time for these issues to be vetted, far better than the month after, especially if keeping silent allows this administration to be re-elected.

This is a video of a speech given by Lara Logan, the CBS reporter assaulted in Tahir Square in Cairo. What she is explaining is that far from the Taliban and Al Qaeda being on the run, they are coming back more powerfully than ever and they are posing an ever greater threat to the West. And she would know, and because she is an absolute insider in media networks, she will have more than a normal level of influence on the coming debates on American foreign policy and not incidentally on media reporting of the Obama administration. I don’t know whether she would have spoken as she does before her horrific personal experience but however she felt then, she is certainly clear eyed today.

There is a quite full report in The Chicago Sun Times with this extended quote from the speech:

Her ominous and frightening message was gleaned from years of covering our wars in the Middle East. She arrived in Chicago on the heels of her Sept. 30 report, ‘The Longest War.’ It examined the Afghanistan conflict and exposed the perils that still confront America, 11 years after 9/11.

Eleven years later, ‘they’ still hate us, now more than ever, Logan told the crowd. The Taliban and al-Qaida have not been vanquished, she added. They’re coming back.

‘I chose this subject because, one, I can’t stand, that there is a major lie being propagated . . .’ Logan declared in her native South African accent.

The lie is that America’s military might has tamed the Taliban.

‘There is this narrative coming out of Washington for the last two years,’ Logan said. It is driven in part by ‘Taliban apologists,’ who claim ‘they are just the poor moderate, gentler, kinder Taliban,’ she added sarcastically. ‘It’s such nonsense!’

Logan stepped way out of the ‘objective,’ journalistic role. The audience was riveted as she told of plowing through reams of documents, and interviewing John Allen, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan; Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and a Taliban commander trained by al-Qaida. The Taliban and al-Qaida are teaming up and recruiting new terrorists to do us deadly harm, she reports.

She made a passionate case that our government is downplaying the strength of our enemies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, as a rationale of getting us out of the longest war. We have been lulled into believing that the perils are in the past: ‘You’re not listening to what the people who are fighting you say about this fight. In your arrogance, you think you write the script.’

Our enemies are writing the story, she suggests, and there’s no happy ending for us.

What a consequential election the Americans are about to have with the right to free contraceptives and saving Big Bird from the private sector the major elements in the Democrat pitch.

Biden is wily and been around the traps for quite a while. He is practised in the art of politics which makes him a formidable opponent and not someone to let one’s guard down against for a moment. Though he lied and misrepresented from one end of the debate to the other, in my remembrance of the time he was more than a match for Sarah Palin and Paul Ryan is new at the game. Ryan has a number of potential problems in front of him – he may be too wonkish, he may sound too much like he intends to slash and burn and he is coming in against an expectation that will work against him if at the end of the night Biden has been able to hold his own. For all that, Ryan understands the issues within an inch of his life and Biden does not. We shall soon see for ourselves.

Friday on SBS at ADST noon.

Maybe, just maybe, the media don’t like to be taken for complete fools. They are partisan to the farthest extent possible, but there comes a time when their integrity becomes so obviously on the line that there is nothing left for them to do but to try to look responsible and honest. The persistent lies by Obama over the attack on the Consulate in Benghazi and the death of the American ambassador are now rightly an issue that only the deeply morally impaired will be able to support the president on. Following the debate, this may be the final death blow for media complicity in a failing election campaign. The media may be – may be – about to get off the Obama campaign bus.