SARAH PALIN'S "INTERVIEW" WITH ABC'S CHARLEY GIBSON WILL BE WORTHLESS GOP HYPE

The McCain/Palin campaign picked out the biggest wus in the network news business, Charley Gibson of ABC NEWS, for Sarah Palin to do her first interview.

Why did they bother?

Why didn't they just put her on FOX NEWS or let her sitdown with Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham or Michael Savage?

NONE of them are reporters either.

Commentary by BILL CORCORAN, editor of CORKSPHERE



Sarah Palin's "interview" with Charles Gibson won't give her any credibility

By Chad
Created 09/08/2008 - 10:15am
Published on BuzzFlash.org (http://www.buzzflash.com/articles)

The McCain campaign has been hiding Sarah Palin, treating her as if she is a China doll.

"She's too delicate to be presented in a one-on-one interview with a reporter who might ask 'tough' questions" is the impression given by the McCain campaign.

McCain campaign manager Rick Davis summed it up well on Sunday. "We run our campaign, not the news media. And we'll do things on our timetable."Well, that timetable got thwarted when the campaign realized that keeping her in a box forever isn't going to work. So they decided to grant one reporter a chance to interview Sarah Palin.Now if you run the McCain campaign, you have lots of options.

You can go with a total partisan (Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, among others) but that might seem a hollow gesture. You could go with a woman reporter who you know will be soft toward Gov. Palin, such as Diane Sawyer and Katie Couric.

Not only knowing that won't hit hard for political reasons, but also the idea of having a woman interview the first female Republican vice presidential candidate. But perhaps you think that there may be a backlash against Palin being interviewed by a woman (an incredibly sexist thought).

So you decide to pick a white man who will be on your side [1] but have perceived credibility:

ABC's Charlie Gibson. Perfect.We know Gibson's obsession with capital gains tax cuts [1] from the debates, and his utter disdain for Barack Obama over Hillary Clinton in Philadelphia [1] is legendary. And it gets even worse for the truth: Gibson will travel to Alaska to do the interview.

The idea that Palin will gain the upper hand by having the setup on her home turf diminishes even more so the little credibility the interview might generate.

So when Gibson treats her with softball questions, and treads lightly on any possible issue (and won't address alleged serious corruption issues during her brief reign as governor or as mayor of Wasilla), then the McCain campaign will get to say, "See, she can stand up to the test."By the time the interview will take place, Palin will have been in the national spotlight for two weeks. You know the McCain campaign has been testing her and feeding her material so she can sound somewhat informed.

If the McCain campaign people seriously think they have treated Sarah Palin well in all of this, they are sadly mistaken. The more they treat her like a China doll, the more of a joke she becomes.

Davis also said Sunday that Gov. Palin won't subject herself [2] to any tough questions from reporters "until the point in time when she'll be treated with respect and deference." She's a politician running to be vice president of the United States: respect and deference don't come for any candidate.

Short of something more extreme coming out, Palin won't be the next Thomas Eagleton [3]. So as long as Gov. Palin will be in the spotlight, she needs to speak for herself in an objective scenario where she might fall flat on her face.

Vice presidential candidates have done so for over 200 years without much harm done.

We currently have a vice president whom the media is scared of, and won't ask tough questions.

To replace him with a vice president who is scared to take questions isn't a scenario for a democratic republic.