U.S. vice presidential (VP) candidates Joe Biden and Sarah Palin centered their debate on economy and diplomacy Thursday night at Washington University in St. Louis, Miss..

Democratic vice presidential nominee Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) (L) and Republican vice presidential nominee Alaska Governor Sarah Palin (R) smile as they chat onstage at the end of their vice presidential debate at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, Oct. 2, 2008. (Xinhua/Reuters Photo)

Biden and Palin started their debate with a discussion of the economy.

Palin, a female Republican governor from Alaska, blamed some of the U.S. financial crisis on Wall Street.

“You’re darn right it was the predator lenders,” she said. “There was greed and corruption on Wall Street.”

Biden blamed some of the crisis on deregulation policies that Republican presidential nominee John McCain believes in.

“McCain voted for deregulation and that is why we are in the crisis that we are in,” he said.

Biden said the economic bailout bill is evidence that the United States has had the “worst economic policy we ever had.”

Palin said a barometer for how Americans are feeling about the economy can be felt at kids’ soccer games.

She said Americans are “scared.”

Palin said Democratic presidential nominee Obama’s economic plans are “the backwards way of trying to grow our economy” because she believes he would raise taxes too high on too many people.

She noted that Biden said recently it would be “patriotic” of the wealthy to pay higher taxes.

“That’s not patriotic,” she says. In her view, millions of Americans believe government is “the problem” and doesn’t need more in taxes.

She added that “millions of small businesses” would pay higher taxes because Obama would raise them on those who earn more than 250,000 U.S. dollars a year while Biden said the fact is that 95 percent of small businesses earn less than that amount.

The two candidates also disagreed about the causes of climate change.

Palin said she isn’t one to “attribute every activity of man to the changes in the climate.”

“There is something to be said also for man’s activities, but also for the cyclical temperature changes on our planet,” she said.

Biden disagreed, saying, “I think it is manmade. It’s clearly manmade.”

“If you don’t understand what the cause is, you cannot come up with a solution,” he added..

Palin praised the surge in Iraq and said Obama voted against funding the troops in Iraq.

“The surge and counter insurgency has worked,” she said. “It would be a shame if we quit on Iraq.”

Palin even said that setting a timetable to withdraw troops from Iraq, a position Obama supported, was tantamount to “a white flag of surrender in Iraq.”

Biden said he and Obama will be the administration that will end the war.

“We will end the war. With John McCain there is no end to the war,” he said. Thursday’s debate is the only VP debate for this general election.

Palin accused Barack Obama of voting against funding for U.S. troops in combat and chastised Biden, for defending the move, “especially with your son in the National Guard” and headed for Iraq.

“John McCain voted against funding for the troops,” as well, Biden countered, adding that the Republican presidential candidate had been “dead wrong on the fundamental issues relating to the conduct of the war.”

He did not immediately reply to Palin’s mention of his son, Beau, the Delaware attorney general, who is scheduled to fly to Iraq with his National Guard unit on Friday.

For much of the evening, the debate unfolded in traditional vice presidential fashion– the running mates praising their own presidential candidate and denigrating the other.

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.

Pre-debate polls show the public has become increasingly skeptical of her readiness for high public office.

It is still too early to tell if her performance in the debate improved her image.

VietNamNet/Xinhuanet