Regardless of whom you were rooting for before Thursday evening's vice presidential debate, the anticipation was much like that before an Olympic figure-skating competition. Would the candidates try a too-fancy maneuver and blow it? Would a terrible gaffe bring them crashing down in front of millions of horrified viewers? Would the clock keep ticking as they tried to regain their balance amid the humiliation of a stumble?

Supporters of both candidates knew there was much at stake - especially for Republican Sarah Palin, who had had a disastrous couple of weeks, chiefly because of her stumbling, incoherent performance in a series of television interviews which had turned her into fodder for gleeful late-night comedians.

As it turned out, Palin the debater managed not to be the cartoon version of herself portrayed by Tina Fey on Saturday Night Live. But that's not nearly good enough.

John McCain's running mate has shown herself to be a charming and spirited campaigner. But pre-debate, she had not demonstrated a broad enough knowledge of foreign affairs or economics to assume the role of vice president or, heaven forbid, president. Nothing she said or did at the debate proved otherwise.

Palin was confident, even cocky at times. She had learned her lines and masked the shallowness of her knowledge of national and international affairs with a peppy, folksy style ("Darn right, it was predatory lenders"; "Here's a shout-out" to third-graders watching at home in Alaska; "Say it ain't so, Joe, there you go again").

Palin acknowledged that she might not answer the questions the way they were asked - and then dodged many of them. When challenged on her talking points by Democrat Joe Biden - on health care, for instance, or tax policy - she rarely gave an effective follow-up.

On the economy, she had little to offer rightly anxious citizens. She insisted McCain was a champion of strong regulation - and then insisted that government "get out of the way."

On the environment, Palin acknowledged that climate change is real but then gave a muddy discourse about how much human beings may or may not be responsible. "I don't want to argue about the causes," she said - without explaining how we could ameliorate the impact without knowing where it came from.

For his part, Biden was neither windy nor condescending, two fears of Democrats as they awaited the debate. In some ways, Biden made a better case for Barack Obama's candidacy than Obama himself in the first presidential debate. He presented Obama's platform in often sharp, concise language, rarely falling into the Senate-speak that has doomed so many previous candidacies.

Biden challenged Palin to show Americans where McCain's policies on Iran, Iraq and the Middle East would differ from President Bush's. He reminded us that his knowledge of the world is deep and, by comparison, Palin's is not.

If you were dreading - or hoping for - a meltdown from one candidate or the other, it didn't happen. But surely we can set a bar for the next vice president higher than that.

While Palin didn't bomb, neither did she show a nuanced understanding of the complicated world into which she has been thrust.