Here, again, Raddatz controlled the topics.  We have 23 million Americans who are desperate to find jobs … we have looming tax increases and budget cuts that are threatening to send our country into another recession … and Martha spends, what felt like, half the time talking about foreign policy?

Now about the grinning.  It was more than grinning.  The look on Joe Biden’s face and his demeanor throughout the debate came across as demeaning and disrespectful.  Did he have good things to say?  Yeah … substance wise, Joe Biden had an excellent debate (with the exception of a few issues, which we’ll get to in a second).  But Joe managed to shoot himself in the foot by distracting the American people with that condescending grin, the laughing, grunting and sighing.  Add to his aping for the camera an overbearing eagerness to interrupt Paul Ryan, an act which was aided by none other than the moderator.  Honestly, it became almost unbearable.  I got messages from friends last night telling me they just had to tune out. 

Joe Biden did make a few interesting claims.  Notice how he threw the entire intelligence community under the bus on the issue of security in Benghazi?  Or how about his repetition of the $5 trillion tax cut claim, that has been widely discredited by even Obama’s propagandists?  Then there was his class warfare … harping on millionaires and billionaires, holding the middle class hostage to pay for tax cuts for people “who don’t need it.”  And did you notice how Biden completely lied to the American people about Mitt Romney’s effective tax rate? 

Look, is this going to change anything?  Doubtful.  Paul Ryan didn’t screw up and Biden screwed himself by acting like a jerk.   In the end I would call it a draw, with the biggest loser being Martha Radditz and the only memorable part being Joe Biden’s Cheshire cat grin and belligerent interruptions. 

There were some Biden moments that were either interesting or infuriating.  Let’s see ….

Biden’s jabs on Romney’s 47 percent statement.  Clear-thinking voters understand that Romney was conceding these entitlement voters to Obama.  He couldn’t worry about them in the campaign .. they were not going to vote for someone who wasn’t promising them even more of someone else’s money.

Biden says that our intelligence assets will tells us when Iran is close to building a nuclear bomb.  Really?  The same intelligence assets who told us Islamic goons were planning another attack on U.S. diplomats in Libya?  The same intelligence assets that Obama relied on to tell us that Al Qaeda had been knocked back on its heels? 

Biden’s sarcastic and petulant response to Ryan’s accurate statement that the Kennedy tax cuts actually led to an increase in revenues to the federal government.  “Oh!  So now you’re Jack Kennedy?” 

In the end?  I certainly don’t think that this debate repairs the damage done to the Obama campaign last week.  Neither side came out a clear winner.  Emotion and bluster buried reason and truth to some extent.  Again … the winner was Jim Lehrer. 

Martha Raddatz has moderated her last debate.