The Palin-Couric Interviews: She IS Qualified!

Of course by "she," I mean Katie.

Even by the standard build-up-then-tear-down cycle of American public figures, the coverage of Katie Couric over the last two years by the reporters who write about TV has been bizarre, bordering on grotesque. One moment she was going to save network news, the next she allegedly had euthanized it. (Interesting factoid: there are more reporters writing about TV than people reading about it. Most people just watch TV.) Never mind that the margins separating the three newscasts' viewership barely matter. The Big Three have a collective audience of about 22 million people -- in a country of 300 million.

That said, the Katie-Sarah interviews instantly took flight, landing at every other TV news program and soaring through cyberspace for a simple reason: they're good -- riveting exchanges which have informed the country about how (mis)informed the newest political star really is. With the persistence of Tim Russert and the common sense approach of, well, Katie Couric, she asked consummately reasonable questions and repeated them until she got answers ... on most of the questions. (Katie, she never did "get back to ya'" on McCain's senate record.)

Palin might have been expecting "Katie and Sarah's High School Reunion." A chit-chat about their daughters ... the highs and lows of balancing family and career ... and what's with those glasses?! But now is not the time for perky. And so the interviews have been serious -- sensibly serious. No frothy questions, but also no gotcha showboating. (Come on, it's not like Katie asked Palin to name the President of Palau.)

How fair have the interviews been? Stunningly there's been no outcry from conservatives even though Palin fumbled badly in the early installments. And no one is claiming sexism. In part that's because we have a woman interviewing a woman. Maybe that's what it takes until women are nominated for high office more regularly.

This is precisely why the journalist I miss most this season is 60 Minutes' intrepid Ed Bradley. If Ed Bradley were around to interview Barack Obama, he'd give him a gloves-off grilling on everything from his policies to his former pastor to his feelings on race and identity -- and that would do all of us, including Obama, a favor. Too many white journalists are just too nervous to dive right in with an anomaly like Obama. That hesitancy outrages the right and ultimately does a disservice to Obama. (It's why many voters -- and I'm not talking about the racist ones -- still feel a distance with Obama.)

Remember, it took Bradley to uncover the gross misconduct of Prosecutor Mike Nifong in the Duke Lacrosse rape case. That was a case so thoroughly racial, and so public, that it might very well have needed a black reporter of national stature to question the assertions of a poor, otherwise powerless, black defendant without seeming biased. Bradley's work on that story was monumental.



But back to Couric and Palin: Whatever happens on November 4th, the weekly Katie-Sarah interviews must continue, at least through November sweeps. They're the best thing on TV right now.