ST. LOUIS — Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin painted herself as a plain-spoken middle-class champion, while Joe Biden blended a common touch with deep experience, as the two vice presidential nominees clashed over Iraq, the economy and other key issues in yesterday's debate.

What was touted as a moment of truth for Palin instead turned into a lively and civil argument over the policies and records of Sens. John McCain and Barack Obama. And Palin for the most part held her own against the more veteran Biden.

With a relatively steady performance, the Alaska governor also might have helped arrest voters' declining confidence in her candidacy since McCain put her on the Republican ticket five weeks ago.

She arrived at Washington University under a growing cloud of doubt about her readiness to step into the nation's top job. At 72, McCain would be the oldest first-term president, and nine vice presidents have been elevated after a death or resignation.

It was a stark historical tableau. On a stage long dominated by white men, a 44-year old woman and 65-year-old man were questioned by a black woman, PBS' Gwen Ifill.

Palin peppered her responses with "darn right" and "I'll betcha" and at one point a wink to the audience, while Biden debated along more traditional lines, offering point-by-point descriptions of where he and Obama stood. The six-term Delaware senator avoided direct attacks on Palin, focusing his criticism instead on McCain, a tried-and-true tactic for the No. 2 member of a ticket.

But for Palin, the stakes were enormous as the McCain-Palin ticket falls behind in polls, both nationally and in many battleground states. Just hours before the debate, the McCain-Palin campaign said it would shift money and staff out of the battleground state of Michigan, a state they'd hoped to take back from the Democrats.

DIFFERENT VIEWS ON IRAQ

For Palin detractors who expected a meltdown onstage, the night was a disappointment. Republican strategists not directly connected with the campaign were thrilled by her performance. And if Biden's detractors hoped he would be windy or overbearing, they, too, were disappointed. He showed off his three decades of Washington experience in a way designed to reassure voters about himself and Obama.

Nowhere during the 90-minute debate was the disagreement sharper than it was over Iraq. Both Palin and Biden have sons in or headed to Iraq, but they offered vividly different views of the conflict.

"We cannot afford to lose there or we're going to be no better off in the war in Afghanistan, either. We have got to win in Iraq," Palin said.

Biden fought back, saying that "Barack Obama's offered a clear plan — shift responsibility to the Iraqis over the next 16 months. Draw down our combat troops." Obama would withdraw one to two brigades a month.

Palin called that plan a "white flag of surrender," and recalled that Biden originally was for the war in Iraq. Biden voted to give President Bush broad authority to wage war in 2002, but has since been a leading critic of the way the administration has conducted the war.

"Oh, man," Palin said, "it's so obvious that I'm a Washington outsider and someone just not used to the way you guys operate ... you're one who says, you know, as so many politicians do, 'I was for it before I was against it,' or vice versa."

'SHORT END OF STICK'

At the outset of the debate, Biden described how Democrats want to help homeowners and financial institutions reeling from the nation's credit crisis by listing "basic criteria" an Obama White House would follow.

"You have to focus on homeowners and folks on Main Street ... you have to treat the taxpayers like investors in this case."

Palin gave a folksy response.

"Go to a kid's soccer game on Saturday," said the mother of five, "and turn to any parent there on the sideline and ask them, 'How are you feeling about the economy?' And I'll betcha you're going to hear some fear in that parent's voice."

Biden countered such talk with common-man touches of his own, saying that he too knew what it was like to sit around a kitchen table with his family. He mentioned having been a single dad after his first wife was killed in a car crash, and choked up as he said it.

Biden concentrated on tying McCain to the record of the Bush administration, while Palin fashioned herself and McCain as middle-class champions.

"You ask anybody ... whether or not the economy or foreign policy of this administration has made them better off in the last eight years," Biden said, "and whether John McCain differs. ... The people in my neighborhood, they get it. ... They've been getting the short end of the stick."

Said Palin, referring to the two mortgage giants that last month were seized by the federal government: "Two years ago, remember, it was John McCain who pushed so hard with the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reform measures. People in the Senate ... didn't want to listen to him and wouldn't go toward that reform that was needed then."

After Palin repeatedly referred to herself and McCain as "mavericks," Biden responded sharp- ly, insisting that McCain has never been a maverick "on things that matter to people's lives. ... So maverick he is not on things that matter to people at that kitchen table."

Biden said he had worked with senators across the partisan divide — "It's fair to say that I have almost as many friends on the Republican side of the aisle as I do on the Democratic side of the aisle," he said — in trying to craft solutions in 35 years in the Senate.

It's McCain, Biden said, who is out of touch. A few weeks ago, Biden recalled, McCain declared that the fundamentals of the American economy were strong. Hours later, he said it was in crisis.

"He was talking to and he was talking about the American workforce," said Palin, who then winked at the audience. "And the American workforce is the greatest in this world with the ingenuity and the work ethic that is just entrenched in our workforce. That's a positive, that's encouragement, and that's what John McCain meant."

They fought over energy, as Palin charged that Obama's vote for a comprehensive energy bill wound up giving tax breaks to Big Oil.

Biden countered that McCain's tax cuts would benefit Exxon Mobil and rich CEOs.

'CAN I CALL YOU JOE?'

Palin and Biden were each appealing in their own way — and in ways that neither McCain nor Obama were in their first debate last Friday.

Palin wore a bright smile throughout the exchange and carried herself with confidence. McCain spent most of the 90 minutes avoiding looking at Obama, but Palin directed her comments at her opponent and made eye contact. "Can I call you Joe?" she asked him as they strode across the stage for the traditional handshake during the introductions.

Biden was direct, not verbose, and his answers came crisply in contrast to Obama's more studied and sometimes pausing style of speaking. That he knew his brief was less surprising, given his experience, but he avoided speaking in the kind of senatorial vernacular that often hampers someone who has been in the capital as long as he has. And he, too, flashed his smile to good effect.

ON FOREIGN POLICY

Biden talked toughest on foreign policy. A surge of additional troops like the one in Iraq won't work in Afghanistan, he said, an opinion shared by the top U.S. military commanders in the region.

"John continues to tell us that the central war in the front on terror is Iraq," Biden said. "I promise you, if an attack comes in the homeland, it's going to come as our security services have said ... from al-Qaida planning in the hills of Afghanistan and Pakistan."

That's why, particularly in Pakistan, he said, "a stable government needs to be established."

Palin agreed that dangers lurk in many places, including Pakistan, but coolly told Biden that it was Army Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, as well as al-Qaida leaders, who said Iraq is the "central (front in the) war on terror."

They also disagreed on Afghanistan. "The surge principles, not the exact strategy, but the surge principles, that have worked in Iraq need to be implemented in Afghanistan also," Palin said.

Not so, Biden said.

"Our commanding general in Afghanistan said the surge principle in Iraq will not work in Afghanistan," he said. "Not Joe Biden — our commanding general in Afghanistan."

Neither vice-presidential candidate appeared to make a career-altering gaffe. Palin twice called the commanding U.S. general in Afghanistan "General McClellan"; his name is Gen. David McKiernan.