"A McCain-Palin adviser says an interview was offered to ABC's Charlie Gibson several days ago and that they expect it to happen in the latter part of the week in Alaska. Palin is the governor of Alaska and is expected to return home at midweek after more joint appearances with McCain."
ORIGINAL POST: It's been nine days since Gov. Sarah Palin was tapped to be John McCain's vice president, and the Alaska Republican has given nary an interview since then. Her absence was acutely felt this Sunday, as both presidential candidates and Sen. Joseph Biden took to the morning shows to plead their cases for election day.
Palin came up primarily in the context of her refusal to appear.
On NBC's Meet the Press, Biden told Tom Brokaw, "Eventually, she's going to have to sit in front of you like I'm doing and have done. Eventually, she's going to have to answer questions and not be sequestered. Eventually, she's going to have to answer on the record." Later, Brokaw told viewers he had reached out to the Delaware Democrat's Republican counterpart to no avail.
McCain, appearing on CBS's Face The Nation, was asked about Palin's absence as well. He hinted that his number two would be taking questions soon, but dismissed the inquiry with a humorous dig at the number of times he himself has gone on the show,
"We just finished the convention but within the next few days and I am strongly recommending that she come on Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer and that will be the first of her 65 appearances," said the Senator.
Meanwhile, Barack Obama, appearing on ABC's This Week, made a sly joke about Palin's eagerness to throw a political punch but shyness about taking press questions.
And then there was Rick Davis. McCain's campaign manager, appearing on the Fox New Channel, told Chris Wallace that Palin would not be subjected to reporters questions "until the point in time when she'll be treated with respect and deference."
Ripping the fourth estate for a perceived bias towards the Alaska Governor, Davis went on.
"She's not scared to answer questions," he said, "but you know what? We run our campaign not the news media... Sarah Palin will have the opportunity to speak to the American people. She will do interviews, but she'll do them on the terms and conditions" the campaign decides.
Days earlier, Marc Ambinder of the Atlantic reported that a McCain aide said it would be a while before the Governor is subjected to direct questions from the press. The campaign, Ambinder wrote, will "effectively deal with the media's complaints, and their on-the-record response to all this will be: 'Sarah Palin needs to spend time with the voters.'"
Already, members of the press and Democratic activists are irked by the absence and trying to make political hay from it. Moveon.org has even <a href="http://pol.moveon.org/palinclocks.html";>started a clock tracking how long it has been since Palin fielded a question.
By now, it is evident that the Alaska Republican is either knowingly deceiving voters or simply has her facts wrong when it comes to her support for the bridge. Palin backed the project when she ran for the governor's seat, <a href="http://www.andrewhalcro.com/the_bridge_to_somewhere";>even posing for a picture holding a t-shirt reading "Nowhere, Alaska" - a sympathetic gesture to the ridiculed construction plans.
And, it turns out, she once promised the voters of her home state that she would not only come to the defense of the bridge but would "not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project or any other into something that's so negative."
Here Palin is from an October 2, 2006 interview with the Ketchikan Daily News, conducted before she was elected governor (and before her opposition to the Bridge to Nowhere became a linchpin of her national persona).
"Asked what issues she's hearing about from Southeast Alaskans, Palin said many residents here feel they've been ignored in some sense.
"I'm hearing from a lot of Southeast residents who believe that maybe they haven't been given their due respect," she said. "Part of my agenda is making sure that Southeast is heard. That your projects are important. That we go to bat for Southeast when we're up against federal influences that aren't in the best interest of Southeast."
She cited the widespread negative attention focused on the Gravina Island crossing project.
"We need to come to the defense of Southeast Alaska when proposals are on the table like the bridge and not allow the spinmeisters to turn this project or any other into something that's so negative," Palin said.
The Gravina bridge proposal has been a priority of Govs. Frank Murkowski, Tony Knowles and previous governors as well as the Alaska Department of Transportation, said Palin.
"There needs to be a link between Ketchikan and its future and its future opportunities and progress, opening up land in this area," she said.
Then there is this quote that was picked up by NPR, in which Palin praised the pork that the Alaska congressional delegation <a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/secretmoney/2008/09/palins_record_on_earmarks.html";>was able to secure in the transportation bill. The praise of Don Young, who has been ridiculed for his earmarks and is under criminal investigation for his dealings with Alaska oil services company Veco Corp., is particularly problematic.
"And our congressional delegation, God bless 'em. They do a great job for us," Palin said at the forum hosted by the Alaska Professional Design Council. "Representative Don Young, especially God bless him, with transportation -- Alaska did so well under the very basic provisions of the transportation act that he wrote just a couple of years ago. We had a nice bump there. We're very, very fortunate to receive the largesse that Don Young was able to put together for Alaska."
In case you (or your list) have not heard, this is a list of the books Palin tried to ban from the Wasillia Public Library:
(This information is taken from the official minutes of the Wasilla Library Board).
A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden
As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
Blubber by Judy Blume
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Canterbury Tales by Chaucer
Carrie by Stephen King
Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
Christine by Stephen King
Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Cujo by Stephen King
Curses, Hexes, and Spells by Daniel Cohen
Daddy's Roommate by Michael Willhoite
Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller
Decameron by Boccaccio
East of Eden by John Steinbeck
Fallen Angels by Walter Myers
Fanny Hill (Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure) by John Cleland
Flowers For Algernon by Daniel Keyes
Forever by Judy Blume
Grendel by John Champlin Gardner
Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling
Have to Go by Robert Munsch
Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Impressions edited by Jack Booth
In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
It's Okay if You Don't Love Me by Norma Klein
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
Lady Chatterley's Lover by D.H. Lawrence
Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
Little Red Riding Hood by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm
Lord of the Flies by William Golding
Love is One of the Choices by Norma Klein
Lysistrata by Aristophanes
More Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
My Brother Sam Is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher
Collier
My House by Nikki Giovanni
My Friend Flicka by Mary O'Hara
Night Chills by Dean Koontz
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
One Day in The Life of Ivan Denisovich by Alexander Solzhenitsyn
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Ordinary People by Judith Guest
Our Bodies, Ourselves by Boston Women's Health Collective
Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy
Revolting Rhymes by Roald Dahl
Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones by Alvin Schwartz
Scary Stories in the Dark by Alvin Schwartz
Separate Peace by John Knowles
Silas Marner by George Eliot
Slaughterhouse- Five by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
The Bastard by John Jakes
The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
The Color Purple by Alice Walker
The Devil's Alternative by Frederick Forsyth
The Figure in the Shadows by John Bellairs
The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Snyder
The Learning Tree by Gordon Parks
The Living Bible by William C. Bower
The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare
The New Teenage Body Book by Kathy McCoy and Charles Wibbelsman
The Pigman by Paul Zindel
The Seduction of Peter S. by Lawrence Sanders
The Shining by Stephen King
The Witches by Roald Dahl
The Witches of Worm by Zilpha Snyder
Then Again, Maybe I Won't by Judy Blume
To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee
Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare
Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary by the Merriam-Webster
Editorial Staff
Witches, Pumpkins, and Grinning Ghosts: The Story of the Halloween
Symbols by Edna Barth
4:08:01 PM comment []
