Biden, Ryan fight hard for a draw

Vice President Joe Biden and Republican challenger Paul Ryan hit the campaign trail yesterday after a combative debate in which they challenged each other's facts and claims while offering starkly different visions for the direction the country should follow.
In the lone debate between the vice presidential contenders, Biden achieved his goal of bringing the fight to his GOP foe in battling Ryan to a draw, boosting the spirits of Democrats disheartened by President Barack Obama's lackluster performance in the first presidential debate last week.
Ryan, meanwhile, made a positive impression with his command of both domestic and foreign policy issues that showed him to be a formidable national candidate after a career of local congressional races in his native Wisconsin.
A snap CNN-ORC International poll showed voters who watched Thursday's debate narrowly favoured Ryan over Biden by 48%-44%, a statistically even result after GOP presidential challenger Mitt Romney scored a clear victory over Obama last week in their first of three debates.
Martha Raddatz of ABC News aggressively moderated the debate, challenging both candidates on some claims and moving on to various topics covering both domestic and foreign policy.
Ryan repeatedly said the Obama administration has taken the nation in the wrong direction, asserting it has hindered economic recovery and weakened US influence around the world.
He also repeated several times, in reference to the recent terrorist attack on a US diplomatic compound in Libya and other anti-American protests, that "what we are watching on our TV screens is the unravelling of the Obama foreign policy."
Biden called several of Ryan's remarks "malarkey" and challenged Americans to trust their common sense when judging proposals by the Republican challengers.
The tax and entitlement reforms proposed by Romney and Ryan would harm the middle class and favour the wealthy, Biden said in seeking to depict Republicans as protectors of the privileged.
On the topic of reforming the Medicare programme for senior citizens, which Romney and Ryan seek to partially privatize, Biden referred to a Ryan proposal to provide partial government payment for seniors in the future to buy private health care.
The lone vice-presidential debate before the November 6 election pitted Biden, 69, and his almost four decades of experience in national politics against the 42-year-old Ryan, a 14-year congressional veteran who rose to the chairmanship of the powerful House Budget Committee.
On Iran, widely backed international sanctions pushed by Obama have devastated that country's economy, Biden said. He rejected assertions that Obama failed to work closely with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and that the United States lacked commitment to a possible military strike to prevent Iran from becoming capable of developing a nuclear weapon.
"This president doesn't bluff," Biden said.
Ryan, however, insisted that Iran was closer now to having a nuclear weapon than it was four years ago, blaming the administration for allowing that to happen. He bluntly said that Tehran must not be allowed to become a nuclear power.