Post Interview Roundup

On the actual video, most parts are available here

The Gibson-Palin interviews are over and I think we can say definitively that nothing has really changed except, possibly, Charlie Gibson's approval rating.. Those who like Sarah, still like her and now they don't like Charlie Gibson. Those who don't like her, still don't like her and they think Charlie is fine, which is what they thought before the interview.

I watched the section last night and I thought it was extremely hard hitting which is fine, of course, but the lead-in I will say was especially slanted. Troopergate was mentioned without mentioning what the trooper did. Expenses were mentioned without putting the expenses in context with the two previous governors. It was basically a laundry list of every Democratic slam against Palin over the last two weeks, with very little balance.

Charlie Gibson has a habit of looking over his reading glasses and down his nose at the (shorter) Sarah Palin, giving every inch of the impression of a professor going over an application to his school. The only thing missing was him constantly clicking a pen as he waited for the inevitable slip-up so he could mark it down. I am aware that this is his usual interview style, but it made Sarah look a little more beleaguered and sympathetic to the audience. We've all been there.

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PD toolbar!On the content the most newsworthy portion is her zinger directed at Obama over not picking Hillary: "I bet he wishes he would have picked her...." Which is undeniably true yet still stings... If you're Obama or on his team. The rest was boilerplate, he grilled her on the bridge and she adequately defended it, putting herself, not in the extremely rare group of politicians who are clean on earmarks, but in the barely larger group of politicians who are sensitive to the public on earmarks issues. Both groups, by the way are almost totally composed of Republicans. I think she's going to keep using the bridge line, to the constant annoyance of her opponents.

Also she was asked about whether her responsibilities to her family made her unqualified and whether that question was sexist. She brushed it aside, but even the bringing up of that question, in the weasel-worded sexist framework, is bound to get some blood boiling. Luckily for Obama, Gibson did not dwell long there.

social issues: boilerplate, taxes and the economy: boilerplate. nothing new, no trip-ups that caught my attention.

What was left out of the tape might be another matter, as newsbusters has made us aware that there was some significant content left out of Thursday's interview, especially on Russia:

We cannot repeat the Cold War. We are thankful that, under Reagan, we won the Cold War, without a shot fired, also. We've learned lessons from that in our relationship with Russia, previously the Soviet Union.

We will not repeat a Cold War. We must have good relationship with our allies, pressuring, also, helping us to remind Russia that it's in their benefit, also, a mutually beneficial relationship for us all to be getting along.

Not exactly warmongerish talk there. And also we have Mark Penn with a warning to the Democrats and direct relevance to this interview.

"I think the media so far has been the biggest loser in this race. And they continue to have growing credibility problems.

"And I think that that's a real problem growing out of this election. The media now, all of the media -- not just Fox News, that was perceived as highly partisan -- but all of the media is now being viewed as partisan in one way or another. And that is an unfortunate development.

Tim Russert could have pulled this off. He gave tough interviews to everyone that were expected. But Charlie Gibson wasn't nearly so tough on Obama the last time around and has given us plenty of evidence that he was out to trip up Palin, something he was not particularly motivated to do with Obama. And to be clear, tough interviews are fine and fair, and none of these questions were really out of bounds, but if the media wants to be taken seriously they need to be conscious of how they treat all of the candidates in context.

The biggest result of this interview? Sarah Palin dominated two more newscycles.


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