Republican Sarah Palin and Democrat Joe Biden sparred over taxes, energy policy and the Iraq war in a high-profile debate in which Palin sought to reclaim her identity as a feisty reformer and Biden tried to undercut the maverick image of GOP presidential hopeful John McCain.

Palin, in the 90-minute forum broadcast Thursday night from Washington University in St. Louis, was under intense pressure to show basic competence on issues facing the next president after a series of embarrassing television interviews called into question her readiness for high office.

For the most part she appeared confident and folksy while casting Biden and Democratic standard bearer Barack Obama as tax-raisers who would risk defeat in Iraq and the broader war on terror.

She also tried to portray the Democrats as obsessed with the failures of President Bush even as she acknowledged his Republican administration was responsible for “huge blunders” in the war and elsewhere.

“For a ticket that wants to talk about change and looking into the future, there’s just too much finger-pointing backwards to ever make us believe that that’s where you’re going,” Palin said, saying she and McCain were the real change agents in the race.

But Palin also sidestepped certain questions, pivoting at times to talking points and generalities.

Asked by moderator Gwen Ifill if she would support legislation allowing debt-strapped mortgage holders to file for bankruptcy to get out from under that debt, Palin said yes but avoided details, quickly steering the focus back to a more general discussion of the “toxic mess” in the financial industry.

And asked how she as vice president would help reduce partisanship in Washington, she said, “Let’s commit ourselves just every day American people, Joe Six Pack, hockey moms across the nation, I think we need to band together and say never again.”

Biden, for his part, largely avoided direct challenges to Palin and instead worked to undermine McCain, who has sought throughout the campaign to distance himself from the unpopular Bush.

The Delaware senator repeatedly noted that McCain had sided with Bush on crucial issues, from launching the war in Iraq to tax policies that widened the income disparity between rich and poor.

“He’s been a maverick on some issues, but he has been no maverick on the things that matter to people’s lives,” Biden said of McCain, noting that the Arizona senator had voted for Bush’s budget proposals and against legislation providing heating oil assistance to low income families and enrolling more children in government-sponsored health insurance.

“He’s not been a maverick on virtually anything that genuinely affects the things that people really talk about around their kitchen table,” Biden said.

The candidates traded jabs on energy. Palin criticized the Democratic ticket for opposing offshore oil drilling while Biden chided McCain for voting against proposals in the Senate to expand the development of alternative energy sources.

Palin repeatedly mentioned Obama’s vote in 2005 for an energy bill that allowed oil companies to receive large corporate tax breaks, saying she had worked to stop such corporate greed among oil interests in Alaska.

“Bless their hearts ... they’re not my biggest fans,” Palin said of executives at ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips.