After President Obama's self-described "bad night" at his first debate last week, the Obama campaign is banking on their No. 2, Vice President Joe Biden, to bring his A game to the vice presidential debate tonight.

"The vice president is pretty fired up and ready to go this evening," Obama campaign press secretary Jen Psaki said.

"His No. 1 goal," she told reporters on Air Force One today, is to "lay out the choice for the American people."

It is an "opportunity to speak directly about the differences between the candidates and tickets," Psaki said. "We have great confidence in the vice president's performance."

Tune in to ABCNews.com today for live streaming coverage of the 2012 Vice Presidential Debate moderated by ABC's Martha Raddatz in Danville, Ky. Coverage kicks off with ABC News' live preview show at noon, and full debate coverage begins at 8 p.m.

Obama called Biden earlier today to wish him good luck in his debate against Republican vice presidential nominee Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis.. The president will watch the debate aboard Air Force One on his way back from Miami, where Obama will hold a fundraiser this evening.

Asked about Obama's own efforts to improve his debate performance against Mitt Romney from his lackluster showing in Denver a week ago, Psaki said the campaign is where it thought it would be at this stage in the race.

"As the president said in his ABC interview, he knows he had a bad night, he's looking forward to the debate next week and we know this is a big opportunity, and we feel good about how prepared he'll be," she said. " We'll see how things go from there.

"Yeah, Mitt Romney had a good night last week," she added. "He had a better night than President Obama. Our focus since then has been communicating directly with the American people about the choice in this election. … We've been implementing our ground game.

"We're exactly where we thought we'd be," she said. "We never thought we were going to win Ohio by 10 points or that Virginia and Colorado would be won by 5 or 6 points. … There's remarkable consistency and stability in a lot of these state polls."

Psaki added, "We're very comfortable with the direction of the campaign and the direction of our plans."