Below The Beltway

Following up on Thursday’s appearances on World News Tonight and Nightline, Charlie Gibson’s interview with Sarah Palin took up almost the entirety of Friday’s 20/20.

Here’s Part One:

This part consists primarily of an introductory piece by Kate Snow that, to be honest, didn’t strike me as entirely fair. For one thing, the extended part at the beginning of the piece where Snow points out that Palin uses much the same language on the campaign trail that she did in her September 3rd speech to the Republican National Convention is fairly absurd; of course they’re similar, that’s what a stump speech is all about. Barack Obama uses stump speeches, Joe Biden uses stump speeches, every politician uses stump speeches. Move on

The same can be said about Snow’s criticism of Palin’s billing taking a per diem that every Alaska state employee is entitled to is similarly without merit, as James Joyner pointed out last week.

And the story about her billing the state $ 43,000 for travel after selling the state’s luxury jet ignores the fact that her predecessor Frank Murkowski, who used that jet extensively, had billed the state over $ 500,000 in one year:

Palin’s travel expenses last year – $114,000 – were far less than those submitted the previous year by Gov. Frank Murkowski – the Republican Palin beat in the primary to cement her reputation as a reformer willing to take on members of her own party. Murkowski’s travel expenses for 2006 totaled $516,000 .

There were legitimate questions raised in Snow’s piece but they were crowded out by what was, on the whole, a rather shoddy piece of journalism.

Now, on to the first part of the interview itself:

I noted Plain’s comments about Clinton on Friday, and despite their cuteness, I think it’s fairly clear that picking Hillary Clinton would have been the dumbest thing Barack Obama could have done.

When the interview finally got around to substance and Gibson asked Palin what she would change about Bush’s economic policies and where McCain/Palin would cut government spending, she totally failed to answer the question. Answering a question about where you’ll cut spending by saying that you’ll cut spending by finding “efficiencies” is basically not answering the question at all — especially when Palin goes on to say that the responsibility for finding those efficiencies would be left to “Cabinet members, the next level of bureaucracy,and the next level of bureaucracy.”

Anyone who was looking for Sarah Palin to tell them how a McCain/Palin Administration would move beyond the fiscal irresponsibility of the last eight years was sadly disappointed.

Here’s Part Three:

Again, Palin fails to explain how her and John McCain’s promises of “reform” and “change” and being a Washington outsider is any different from what we heard eight years ago — and we know how that turned out.

And, amazingly she continues to repeat the lie that she stopped the Bridge To Nowhere, when it’s fairly clear that she didn’t do any such thing.

Of course, she didn’t really reject the other absurd earmarks (for things like her seal DNA research) that her state has requested since she became Govenor.

Expect this issue to come up again.

The 20/20 broadcast also included a repeat of portions of Thursday’s interview, but here’s the final part of the new stuff:

For the most part, I think that Palin handled the questions on social issues well enough. She has personal opinions on these issues, just like we all do. How that’s relevant to her being Vice-President I’m not quite sure.

All in all, I think Palin did okay over the course of these two days of interviews. She didn’t make any serious gaffes and has established, I think, that she’s no Dan Quayle. When it came to substance, though, whether it was on foreign policy, economic policy, federal spending, or earmarks, I think she sounded like she was simply regurgitating what was no doubt contained in the briefing books she’d been reading over the previous two weeks.

There will be follow-up questions from here that Palin will have to answer, and some reporters won’t be quite as civil as Charlie Gibson was. Let’s see how she handles it.

Finally, at the end of the broadcast, there was a short roundtable discussion about Palin between George Stephanopolous, Dee Dee Meyers, and Torie Clark that had some interesting insights. If I can find the video, I’ll post it later.