"...the budget that [Rep. Paul Ryan] came forward with is just like Paul Ryan. It is a sensible, straightforward, honest, serious budget and it cut the budget deficit just like we did, by $4 trillion. ... The president came out with his own plan and the president, as you remember, came out with a budget, and I don't think anybody took that budget very seriously."

-- Erskine Bowles, Democratic co-chairman of President Obama's debt and deficit commission, in a Sept. 8, 2011 speech at the University of North Carolina.

President Obama and Vice President Biden have been escalating their attacks in the days since soon-to-be Republican nominee Mitt Romney tapped Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan to be his wingman. But not in the way everyone expected.

Suggesting Republicans want to enslave people and reverting to a 29-year-old charge that Romney was unkind to his dog isn't where the Democratic debate was supposed to be today. The political press said this would be a new era of substantive attacks on Republican policy, not overheated rhetoric and personal attacks.

But here we are, with the nasty attacks still flying after more than four months of the ugliest campaign ever run by an incumbent president...