Nasty Maureen of the New York Slimes - some good slights against

Ryan but she's much more relentless with Joe.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/14/opinion/sunday/an-irish-catholic-wake-up.html?smid=fb-share

The loser of the vice-presidential debate was, of course, Barack Obama. In contrast to the pair on the undercard slugging it out, the president’s limp performance the other night was even more inexplicable and inexcusable. The president was no doubt warned not to sigh, but his entire demeanor was a sigh.

The fact that one diffident debate by the president could throw his whole race into crisis shows that nobody madly loves Obama anymore. With his aloof presidency, he shook off the deep attachments from 2008, and now his support lacks intensity.
Even if he comes out in the town-hall debate on Tuesday with Ben Affleck charm, he has a Mitt Romney problem. Will it be the real Obama or will he just be doing what the media suggest and the base demands?

In Thursday night’s hockey game of a debate, the odd semiotics were not Gore-y sighs but grins. It’s hard to imagine a politician getting penalized for smiling too much, but Joe Biden managed it, breaking out in smiles and laughter 92 times by the count of ABC News. Ever since Obama tapped him, Biden has felt that his role is to warm up Barry’s Brother From Another Planet affect. In this debate, making up for his boss’s Spockiness was critically important, so Biden overcompensated with a volcano of verbosity and gesticulating.

(It gets worse at link)


I liked this:
The 42-year-old Wisconsin congressman kept gulping water, and once, when Biden nailed Ryan for twice soliciting the very stimulus money he condemns, he may have actually gulped. Unlike Palin, who also had to cram before her debate, Ryan did not need to memorize chunks. He actually tried to learn about all the parts of the world he had never followed closely. On Afghanistan, he spouted so many obscure geographical references, from Zabul to Kunar to the treacherous eastern provinces, he sounded like Google maps.