As vice presidential nominees Tim Kaine and Mike Pence prepare to face off in their only debate, we look back at the impact of the 2012 vice presidential debate between Joe Biden and Paul Ryan. While Biden and Ryan were at the table, Real Clear Politics' Alexis Simendinger said on Washington Week that the real focus of the debate was the top of the ticket. Biden, she said, used "Ryan as a proxy for the person who was not at the table" and tried to argue that Mitt Romney was not prepared to be president.
Web Video: VP debate a "proxy" for the top of the ticket
Oct. 03, 2016 AT 6:10 p.m. EDT
TRANSCRIPT
Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.
IFILL: This debate wasn't about either of them? It was about the guys who weren't in the room?
SIMENDINGER: Exactly. I came away feeling that Vice President Biden's mission was not necessarily to create an aura that Paul Ryan was not ready to be president, but that Mitt Romney is not ready to be president. And I felt that he was very much trying to use Ryan as a proxy for the person who was not at the table, which was exactly what you're supposed to do in a vice presidential debate. They were both talking about the top of the ticket. And that I thought was a very interesting thing to watch because the strategy that the Obama team has been using was just blanketed right over Paul Ryan in terms of combating Mitt Romney's, you know, verite, his qualifications, his ability to direct policy, all of it.
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