Winking Palin tops expectations

Washington - While both vice presidential candidates achieved their goals on Thursday night, the stakes were much higher and the bar was much lower for Sarah Palin. So, in the contest of low expectations, Palin won.

Joe Biden's task was to attack. Palin's was to attack, connect and stick to her folksy script.

If nothing else, the first-term Alaska governor got past her raft of nonsensical and meandering answers in evening news interviews, the spoofs and the mockery of late-night comics.

From her first words, a confident Palin sought to connect with voters whose faith in her qualifications has waned. She sprinkled down-home phrases throughout her answers - "bless their hearts" and "darn right". Americans weren't just people they were "Joe Six-Pack" and "Hockey Moms". And who needs polls, she suggested, when there are youth soccer games with parents on the sidelines?

"I'll betcha you're going to hear some fear in that parent's voice," Palin said.

She defended Republican presidential nominee John McCain from Biden's litany of criticisms, and took Biden to task over both his record and that of Democratic nominee Barack Obama.

And yet, it wasn't a perfect performance.

Shaky at times

Palin was shaky at times on less familiar issues. Not even halfway through the debate, Palin was asked a question about sub-prime mortgages but manoeuvred back to the issue of energy where she was clearly more comfortable - and where she had her lines down. It appeared to be a non-sequitur.

"I want to talk about again my record on energy versus your ticket's energy ticket also," she said.

She twice referred to the commanding US general in Afghanistan as "General McClellan".

In fact, his name is General David McKiernan and, as Biden said, he called this week for the US and its allies to rush more troops "as quickly as possible" to Afghanistan and warn that the fighting there could worsen before it gets better.

And there was this minor slip on the financial crisis: "It's a toxic mess, really, on Main Street that's affecting Wall Street."

She was adept at not answering questions and stuck to breezy sound bites, frequently looking to her notes.

At one point, she bluntly acknowledged her failure to answer questions directly, telling Biden: "I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I'm going to talk straight to the American people."

'There you go again'

Palin's head bobbed up and down from notes on her podium to Biden as she rattled off criticisms of the Democratic ticket - doing so with a smile and a conversational tone.

"Now, Barack Obama, of course, he's pretty much only voted along his party lines," she said at one point. At another: "I think who can cut off funding for the troops after promising not to - that's another story." When Biden made a claim about McCain's record, Palin took issue with a "Say it ain't so, Joe. There you go again ... ."

She was channelling Ronald Reagan whose "There you go again" retort put Jimmy Carter on his heels in 1980.

Palin tried hard to show she wasn't a typical politician. "It's so obvious that I'm a Washington outsider," she said, talking dismissively of "East Coast politicians" and saying, "How long have I been at this, like five weeks?"

Biden was critical from the start, accusing President George W Bush of overseeing "the worst economic policies we've ever had." Often tagged as undisciplined, Biden stuck to the Democratic talking points.

The Delaware senator criticised McCain over his conflicting economic statements. "That doesn't make John McCain a bad guy, but it does point out he's out of touch," Biden said.

Intense preparation

He also accused Palin of distorting Obama's record, and said: "Let's get straight who's been right and wrong" on Iraq.

"John McCain has been dead wrong," Biden said before trying his hand at folksiness. "As my mother would say, God love him, but he's been dead wrong."

Seeking to reach out to blue-collar workers, Biden also noted his middle-class roots. And, he told a story of "a guy named Joey" at the local gas station who says he never has enough money to fill up his gas tank.

In the five weeks since she was named to the Republican ticket, Palin's best performances came at the Republican National Convention and in this debate - both after days hunkered down in intense preparation with McCain's most senior advisers running through a script.

As the debate ended, Palin noted she likes "to answer the question without the filter of the mainstream media". The message may be a preview of her campaign narrative in the final stretch - ignore Palin's uneven performance with TV news anchors and consider how she spoke to Americans when it counted.

The big question: Will the country see Palin relatively unscripted again or will McCain's team keep her under wraps until Election Day on November 4 - happy to leave this latest impression?

- AP