Charlie's Weak Interview

Charlie Gibson managed to make Sarah look bad in the first segment of his interview with her Thursday. Which means he did a bad job. Anyone who has been around as long as Charlie can make someone look bad - the challenge is to reveal them to the country, not stump them.

Sarah Palin showed herself as steely and supremely confident--even when she stumbled over a question about the Bush Doctrine --and brushed off whether it mattered that she had never met a foreign head of state in her much anticipated first network interview as John McCain's running mate.

Questions about being mayor and governor, and how those experiences might have prepared her for national leadership would have been better than a game of gotcha on foreign affairs. Save the international stuff until after she gets her footing.

ABC anchor Charles Gibson--who had something to prove as an interviewer after a controversial turn as a debate moderator--at times seemed exasperated at Palin's rehearsed patter in the segments of the interview shown on the evening newscast.

I don't feel that I learned much about Sarah Palin last night - but I did have confirmed for me that Charlie is spineless. I man with some backbone wouldn't have been so fearful of being accused of going easy on Sarah that he would have shown so much... hubris.

Palin, 44, the Alaska governor, kept herself out of major trouble, and that was her most important goal, first do no harm. She sounded reasonable--that is she is not calling for some kind of holy wars in explaining the statement she made in her church about war and God's plan. "I believe that there is a plan for this world and that plan for this world is for good."

Of course, it would have been nice if the McCain people just let her dodge the international stuff - "I'm not taking questions on foreign affairs yet, Charlie. I'm still getting up to speed on some areas that just haven't been relevant to my pay grade as a governor." But they had her pretend to be ready, and Charlie pretended his questions were reasonable, and the elephant in the room went unmentioned.