For Romney and Ryan, It's Hardball and Softball PAINESVILLE, Ohio - One of the advantages of the partnership between Mitt Romney and Paul D. Ryan is their ability to offer varied messages on the campaign trail - unusually varied, as shown on Friday. The running mates punched a list of campaign goals - rallying the conservative base, turning up the heat on President Obama and reaching out to women watching morning television - when each day counting down to Nov. 6 matters. While Mr. Ryan played the hammer of Thor, pounding President Obama in unusually caustic terms, Mr. Romney allowed a lighthearted, humanizing glimpse of himself in an interview for ABC's "Live!" morning show. Mr. Romney and his wife, Ann, proved themselves adept consumers of pop culture, disclosing that "Modern Family" is their favorite television show and that Mr. Romney prefers Snooki (of "Jersey Shore") to Honey Boo Boo (of the reality TV show). The interview, to be broadcast Tuesday, was booked before the explosion of anti-American violence in the Middle East, and while Mr. Romney has addressed that and other weighty topics in recent days, he threw himself into the interview with the morning hosts Kelly Ripa and Michael Strahan. Later on Friday, Mr. Romney somberly asked for a moment of silence for the four American diplomats killed in Libya, delaying his stump speech while the bodies were honored at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. Meanwhile, Mr. Ryan was the iron fist inside Mr. Romney's velvet glove. He spoke to a very different audience from the expected viewers of "Live!" - social conservatives gathered in Washington for the Values Voter Summit sponsored by the Family Research Council, which opposes abortion and gay marriage. Mr. Ryan nodded to both those issues, but his main thrust was to dial up the attacks against President Obama, accusing the president of using "straw-man arguments" because he has no record on which to run. If the intent was to sharpen the contrast between the two presidential campaigns and motivate part of the conservative base at a time when new polls show Mr. Obama gaining a slight advantage, Mr. Ryan may have succeeded. In response, the Obama campaign criticized Mr. Ryan's tone as much as his substance. In the not too distant past, Mitt Romney and Congressman Ryan said they wanted a serious debate on substantive issues. We're still waiting. The Romneys were unusually playful in their joint interview, part of an effort to humanize Mr. Romney that began at the Republican National Convention and included an intimate portrait of the couple at their New Hampshire lake house filmed for CBS News's "60 Minutes." When Mr. Strahan asked Mr. Romney what he wears to bed, the former governor of Massachusetts asked: "Really? Really?" before saying: "I hear the best answer is as little as possible." "We were going down the elevator from the White House, going to an event together, and I walked up to the elevator and am just like blushing, blushing, blushing, and he looks at me and he winks as he does and says, "I look pretty good, don't I?" " Ashley Parker reported from Painesville, and Trip Gabriel from Washington.