WILY:
Vice President Joe Biden has four decades of debate experience, but enters needing a knockout after his boss lost. (Reuters)
NO SWEAT: Paul Ryan, here in Time magazine is muscling up — on talking points, too — for tonight’s showdown. (
)
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Paul Ryan is pumped up for the big debate.
He will clash tonight with Vice President Joe Biden, who faces an extra-heavy lift to repair the damage done by President Obama’s crushing debate loss last week against Mitt Romney.
Biden, a veteran debater who was first elected to the Senate in 1973, when Ryan was just 3, is expected to come out swinging.
But Ryan yesterday said he’s ready for it.
“I’m just doing my homework and studying the issues, and I’ll know how he’ll come and attack us,” Ryan told CNN. “The problem he has is he has Barack Obama’s record he has to run on.”
“I’ve always just believed that if you’re going to do something, do it well,” he said. “Joe Biden has been doing this for a long time. He ran for president twice. He’s a sitting vice president. He’s been on this big stage many times before, so this is new for me.”
Biden, 69, has 40 years of debate experience.
But Ryan, 42, isn’t a complete novice. He’s a 14-year House veteran who serves as chairman of the House Budget Committee.
Biden starts out with public opinion against him. Just 39 percent of voters have a positive opinion of Biden and 51 percent have a negative view, found a new Pew Research Center poll.
Ryan fared a little better, with 44 percent positive and 40 percent negative ratings.
Vice presidential debates are often little more than sideshows, but both campaigns agree that this one matters because of Obama’s debate stumble.
The race is now closer than ever heading into the one and only VP showdown of the campaign.
Obama and Romney were tied at 48 percent yesterday in a Gallup national tracking poll.
Romney jumped ahead of Obama to a 46-45 percent lead in a new Fox News Channel poll. Romney trailed Obama by 5 points in the same poll before the debate.
These polls — and others showing Romney gaining in crucial swing states — are the latest evidence Romney’s nearly flawless debate performance has erased the advantage Obama once enjoyed.
The president yesterday explained that he delivered a flat performance because he was “just too polite.”
“The good news is that’s just the first one,” Obama said on Tom Joyner’s radio show. “By next week . . . a lot of the hand-wringing will be complete because we’re going to go ahead and win this thing.”
Obama and Romney are scheduled for two more debates. They meet for a town-hall-style forum Tuesday at Hofstra University on Long Island, where they will tackle domestic and foreign policy.
Their final debate, Oct. 22 at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Fla., will focus on foreign policy.
Biden and Ryan both have spent days in intense training for their date on the debate stage.
The vice president has been holed up at his home in Wilmington, Del., for practice that included mock debates against Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who plays the role of Ryan.
Biden also has been coached by former Sen. Ted Kaufman and Obama campaign chief strategist David Axelrod.
Ryan did his debate workouts while on the campaign trail and during visits to his home in Janesville, Wis. His debate prep team includes former solicitor general Ted Olson, who stands in for Biden during mock debates, and campaign strategists Russ Schriefer and foreign-policy wonk Dan Senor.
The focus of the debate shifted yesterday to the moderator, ABC News correspondent Martha Raddatz, who had Obama as a guest at her wedding to Julius Genachowski in 1991.
The revelation called into question the impartiality of the seasoned foreign correspondent.
Obama also turned to Genachowski to bundle campaign contributions in 2008 and then named him chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.
Raddatz and Genachowski, now divorced, attended Harvard Law School with Obama.