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Biden, Palin spar over economy, taxes in debate
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-10-03 10:26 ST. LOUIS - Republican vice presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin said in campaign debate Thursday night that John McCain would "put partisanship aside" to help solve the nation's economic crisis. Democrat Joe Biden countered that Wall Street had run wild during eight years of Republican rule in the White House. Palin, the Alaska governor, said GOP presidential candidate McCain had sounded the alarm years ago about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two now-disgraced mortgage industry giants, but other lawmakers had ignored his warnings. Biden, her Democratic counterpart, saw it differently, saying McCain's first words after the crisis erupted were, "The fundamentals of the economy are strong."
The vice presidential candidates debated on a stage at Washington University. The men at the tops of the major party tickets, Democratic Sen. Barack Obama and Republican Sen. McCain, watched on television from hotel suites elsewhere on the campaign trail.
After that, it's a three-week sprint to Election Day in a race that lately has tilted Obama's way as the economic crisis moves to the forefront of the campaign. Palin, who has been governor of her state less than two years, was under intense pressure to demonstrate a strong grasp of the issues as she stepped onto the stage. Polls show the public has become increasingly skeptical of her readiness for high public office. She displayed her trademark smile and feistiness in the opening moments of the debate as she sought to establish a connection with working class voters. "Go to a kids' soccer game on Saturday and turn to any parent on the sideline, and I bet you you're going to hear fear in that parent's voice," she said when asked about the economic crisis. As is her custom on the campaign, she spoke in familiar terms, saying "betcha" rather than "bet you" and "gonna" rather than "going to." Biden's burden was not nearly as fundamental. Although he has long had a reputation for long-windedness, he is a veteran of more than 35 years in the Senate, with a strong knowledge of foreign policy as well as domestic issues. The two debated for 90 minutes with little more than one month remaining in the campaign and McCain struggling to regain his footing. Republican officials disclosed earlier in the day that he was conceding the battleground state of Michigan to Obama. The state voted Democratic four years ago, but McCain had spent millions trying to place it in his column. Palin got some unsettling pre-debate news, as well. Less than an hour before she stepped onstage, a state judge in Alaska threw out a lawsuit filed by Republicans seeking to stop an abuse-of-power investigation aimed at the governor. "Can I call you Joe?" she said to the older man as they shook hands at the outset of the debate. Biden approved. Moments later, moderator Gwen Ifill posed the first question, and the debate unfolded in traditional vice presidential fashion — the running mates praising their own presidential candidate and denigrating the other. Palin said Obama had voted to raise taxes 94 times — an allegation that Biden disputed and then countered. By the same reckoning, he said, McCain voted "477 times to raise taxes." They clashed over energy policy, as well, when Palin said Obama's vote for a Bush administration-backed bill granted breaks to the oil industry. By contrast, she said that as governor, she had stood up to the same industry, and noted that McCain had voted against the bill Obama supported. Biden said that in the past decade, McCain had voted "20 times against funding alternative energy sources and thinks, I guess, the only answer is drill, drill, drill." "The chant is, `drill, baby drill," Palin countered quickly, unwilling to yield to Biden on that issue — or any other. There was pre-debate controversy about Ifill, a PBS anchor, as well. Some conservatives have criticized the Presidential Debates Commission's choice of her as a moderator because she is writing a book, "The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama." The book is about how politics among blacks have changed since the civil rights era. She has said she has yet to write the chapter on Obama and has questioned why people think it will be favorable toward the Democrat. "Frankly, I wish they had picked a moderator that isn't writing a book favorable to Barack Obama," McCain told Fox News on Thursday. "But I have to have confidence that Gwen Ifill will treat this as a professional journalist that she is." David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager, dismissed the complaints as "another in a long line of manufactured controversies." |
