Things to Remember

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US dailies on Friday differed sharply in scoring the vice presidential debate between Republican Sarah Palin and Democrat Joe Biden, suggesting that neither candidate clearly won over public opinion.

The Wall Street Journal said the first term Alaska governor "more than held her own" in debating foreign policy with the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and "won on points at least on Iraq and Afghanistan."

The conservative business daily said she had "shown herself worthy of the national stage" both in the debate and in her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, and should be allowed to do more media interviews.

"Let Mrs Palin be herself, and then when she makes a mistake, as every candidate does, it won't be treated like some epic judgment on her fitness to be vice president," the Journal argued.

The New York Times gave a scalding review of Palin's performance.

"The debate did not change the essential truth of Ms Palin's candidacy: Mr McCain made a wildly irresponsible choice that shattered the image he created for himself as the honest, seasoned, experienced man of principle and judgment," it said.

"After a series of stumbling interviews that raised serious doubts even among conservatives about her fitness to serve as vice president, Ms Palin had to do little more than say one or two sensible things and avoid an election-defining gaffe" in Thursday's debate, it said.

"By that standard, and only that standard, the governor of Alaska did well."

The Washington Post gave both sides a tepid review.

"It is a measure of the low expectations for last night's vice-presidential debate that what was, in the end, rather a surface-skimming discussion full of evasion and mischaracterization, was viewed as good news for both Governor Sarah Palin and Senator Joseph Biden," it said.

"Mr Biden was neither discursive nor condescending, as he can be; Ms Palin was more confident and more coherent than she had been in the few, increasingly disastrous interviews she has given since joining the Republican ticket.

"But there was little serious give-and-take about the major issues of the day -- from the Wall Street bailout to the war in Iraq -- and much trading of canned and misleading talking points," the Post opined.