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| Workers carry chairs through the media center ahead of Thursday's vice presidential debate Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2012, at Centre College in Danville, Ky. |
DANVILLE, Ky.
(AP) -- Vice President Joe Biden and Republican Rep. Paul Ryan seized
the campaign spotlight Thursday night for a 90-minute debate, their only
faceoff of the 2012 race for the White House.
The
encounter between the 69-year-old vice president and 42-year-old
Wisconsin congressman was a high-profile interlude between last week's
race-altering debate featuring President Barack Obama and
Republican
Mitt Romney and next Tuesday's return engagement.
Romney
has gained ground in national and battleground-state surveys in the
week since he shared a stage with the president, and even Obama has
conceded he performed poorly.
Mocking recent
changes in Romney's rhetoric, Obama told a Miami rally on Thursday,
"After running for more than a year in which he called himself severely
conservative, Mitt Romney is trying to convince you that he was severely
kidding."
Romney visited with 93-year-old
evangelist Billy Graham in North Carolina - `Prayer is the most helpful
thing you can do for me," he told the evangelist - before an evening
rally in Asheville.
For Biden, Thursday
night's debate was his first since the 2008 campaign, when he shared a
stage with Sarah Palin, then John McCain's running mate.
Ryan
spars frequently with Democrats during debates on legislation on the
House floor and in the House Budget Committee, which he chairs, but not
in a one-on-one encounter covering 90 minutes and a virtually unlimited
range of topics.
For all their differences,
the two men shared a common objective, to advance the cause of their
tickets in a close race for the presidency - and avoid a gaffe that
might forever seal their place in the history of debates.
Romney's
choice of Ryan as running mate over the summer cheered conservatives in
the House, many of whom regard him as their leader on budget and
economic issues. The seven-term lawmaker has authored a pair of
deficit-reducing budgets in the past two years that call for spending
cuts and changes in Medicare, blueprints that Republicans passed through
the House and Obama and his allies in Congress frequently criticize. He
also champions a no-tax increase approach to economic policy.
As
a senator before becoming vice president, Biden was chairman of the
Foreign Relations and Judiciary committees, and he has long experience
in national security issues. More recently, he was Obama's point man in
arduous, ultimately unsuccessful negotiations with Republicans on steps
to cut the deficit.
Both Ryan and Biden held extensive rehearsals, with stand-ins for their opponents.
Biden
turned to Rep. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who is well-versed in Ryan's
policy views from his tenure as senior Democrat on the Budget Committee.
Ryan's foil in rehearsal was former Solicitor General Ted Olson, a skillful courtroom advocate.
Martha Raddatz of ABC News had moderator duties.
After they meet next week in Hempstead, N.Y., Obama and Romney will have one more debate, Oct. 22 in Boca Raton, Fla.
