he now has to follow through with some sort of policies. reporter: with the vice president appearing, republicans complained the two-day trip is all politics. calling it a kick off to a biden 2016 campaign. the president s supporters say they are glad he s focusing on his issues. my first year, i m okay with loans, but i don t want to be crippled with it. reporter: there should be an emphasis on the economy. employment is an issue. i have a degree but i need to get employed. reporter: white house spokesmen stressed to reporters they are on what he calls an upward trajectory. it s an indication the white house wants the world to know they are doing something about syria while figuring out what to do next. as the president was wrapping up his remarks, campaign style feel
finally somebody is cracking down on big bird. so you have to scratch your head when the president spends the last week talking about saving big bird. meanwhile, the big-name surrogates were out throwing haymakers on the campaign trail. here s old moderate mitt. where you been, boy? i missed you all these last two years. let s get you the plane ticket back to chicago you ve earned. and the veep boys. after some intense warm-up were scrapping in kentucky. it has never been done before. it s been done a couple of times, actually. jack kennedy lowered. now you re jack kennedy. mr. vice president, i know you re under a lot of duress, but i think people would be better served if we don t keep interrupting each other. well, don t take all the four minutes, then. that s a bunch of malarky. less than four weeks till election day, and two candidates wishing they could close the sale as well as this guy does.
the talk shows, you know, when you want to get a quick laugh, david letterman or jon stewart, they invoke joe biden. on the other hand, in fairness to him as well as to paul ryan, these are two irish catholic political warriors who come from different generations. both athletic. they both have a passion about what they re doing. and my own guess is at the end of the evening, one of the tests of a vice presidential debate is, can they handle the presidency? do we want them to be a heartbeat away? and i think in both cases, people would have to say you can have them in that job, and if something happens to the president, they could step it up. that was my judgment. mark, a lot of times these vp debates show that one is not ready to pass that threshold test last night, there s no doubt. joe biden has been in washington since he was 29. yeah. this was a threshold test. biden s obviously passed it. he s been there. it was a real threshold test for
ryan. to your point about biden, you re right, people that know him like him, generally. but a lot of people watching didn t know him. i d say that a lot of people compared to gore stylistic stuff in that debate, biden was a lot worse. he s getting a pass because he s joe and obama got a low performance last night. because we know and like joe so much. that s a question how it plays to the middle. i think he s interrupting. mika, i just don t think you should be laughing during a discussion about thermonuclear war with iran. and the discussion about libya, we watched it again, he was amused at some of paul ryan s approaches toward the concern over iran, and quite frankly totally misrepresenting this is a very serious issue. however amused you are, it s about tone as well. what do you do when your opponent misrepresents the president s position and exactly the sanctions being put on iran?
is that republicans, by going after biden i think right now on style, that s a little bit of a tell that they know, you know what? biden did sort of control this debate substantively. i think he dominated the debate because he was all he was in ryan s face the entire time. the question is, again, how that plays with the voters. i am wondering, though, and i was thinking, when i was watching the vice president last night, that he was, you know, he was he s being a great teammate. he was doing exactly what the president needed. he was lifting the president up after that performance. but i was always reporter: god bless him. god bless him. i was also thinking about a guy who let david gregory know in 2009, he might be interested in running for the presidency again. for a guy who s upside down in the approval ratings, a pew poll has him down at 37%, i just kept thinking last night, again, as a guy that likes joanne awfe an a,