Palin plays to American middle class in debate

The Associated Press ,  St. Louis   |  Fri, 10/03/2008 8:29 AM  |  World

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the first woman nominated by the Republican party as vice president, said the best way to gauge Americans' feelings about the failing U.S. financial system and the $700 billion rescue plan was to go to a soccer game and ask the parents on the sidelines.

"I bet you're going to hear fear," she said, assuring voters that she and Republican presidential nominee John McCain were the "mavericks" who could reform the system.

Palin said "Joe six-packs and hockey moms across the country" needed to band together to say "never again." Those are both terms Palin has used to describe herself as she has sought to ingratiate herself with middle-class Americans.

Biden opened the debate by blaming the Republican party's handling of the country's economy over the eight years of President George W. Bush's administration, which Biden said would be continued by John McCain, the party's presidential nominee.

He also defended the Obama plan to raise taxes on Americans making more than $250,000 annually was a matter of "simple fairness."

"This is not punitive," he said, adding that middle class Americans deserved tax breaks.

Palin said Obama was promoting a "redistribution of wealth" that would result in fewer jobs and a reduction of tax revenues.

Biden accused McCain of planning to give big corporations an additional $300,000 in tax breaks. "That's not redistribution of wealth. That's fairness," he said.

He also called the Republican party's plan for revising the American health insurance system the "ultimate bridge to nowhere," referring to the financial boondoggle that was killed in Alaska after first being supported by Palin, as governor.

With the Republican ticket falling in the polls, Palin was carrying a heavy burden in the back and forth with Biden, a 36-year veteran of the U.S. Senate.

McCain took a huge gamble in choosing Palin, whose addition to the ticket initially mobilized the party's conservative base around his candidacy. In the meantime, however, her inexperience and provincial demeanor have become fodder for late-night television comedians.

Also, in the month since she stepped onto the national stage as the first female Republican vice presidential nominee, the 44-year-old Palin has proved uneven in solo news interviews, showing a lack of experience and breadth of knowledge normally expected in a candidate who would take over in the White House should the 72-year-old McCain win the election, then become incapacitated.

An Associated Press-Gfk poll released Wednesday found that just 25 percent of likely voters believe Palin has the right experience to be president. That is down from 41 percent just after the Republican convention, when the Alaska governor made her well-received national political debut. The same survey shows Democrat Barack Obama with a 48 percent to 41 percent lead in voter preference with less than five weeks remaining until Election Day, Nov. 4.

Palin is facing a man 21 years her elder and one of the Senate's foreign policy deans. Biden is loquacious and gaffe-prone, however, and had to fold his first presidential campaign in 1988 after appropriating to himself parts of the biography of British Labour Party leader at the time, Neil Kinnock. Biden, who must take special care not to condescend to Palin, has issued similar overstatements this year as well.

Public Broadcasting Service journalist Gwen Ifill is moderating the 90-minute debate at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Ifill, herself, has come under criticism from some conservatives because she is writing a book, "The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama," on how politics have changed among black Americans since the civil rights era of the 1960s. The journalist says she has not yet written the chapter on Obama and questioned why critics assume it will be favorable toward the Democratic candidate, a first-term Illinois senator.

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