The TV Zone

As you're doubtless aware, the chatter of the network TV news biz beyond ABC the last few days has been the Sarah Palin/Charlie Gibson interview - much of it surfeited with envy, annoyance and a grudging admission that once again (dammit) "we've screwed over by a campaign that's decided Big Media - Us! - is a convenient whipping post." NBC didn't get Palin; CBS didn't get Palin; CNN didn't; and neither did Fox - though Fox couldn't very well argue that it was being punished for some real or imagined transgression by the McCain campaign (right?)

Instead, what we've got here is a very simple situation: An untested, marginally knowledgeable, arguably unsuited vice presidential nominee who hardly needs a battery of interviews that will pry and pry and pry at each of those issues - experience, knowledge, suitability - to find some chink, some deviation from one response to the next, which would then provide the next day's lead story. Too many interviews means too many opportunities for mistakes, and "mistakes" always - always - are the grist for more stories, more controversy. So McCain kept it to just one - Charlie Gibson.

Why Charlie? There's been endless chatter about that, too, though no one seems to accept the most obvious explanation - that he is fair, and that he is prepared, and that he doesn't betray a taste for a victim's blood. Yeah, you could say the same thing about Brian but Katie? 'Nother story altogether. Why NOT chose Williams (whose audience and various venues exceed ABC's?) The obvious answer is MSNBC, along with Chris and Keith Bickerson, now thankfully divorced. McCain is hardly going to reward that network.

But I'm also thinking cosmetic: Brian is a young, good-looking guy; Charlie's her elder, a father-figure as opposed to a brother figure. On-screen, it's the same visual composite as McCain-Palin - the old guy with the young attractive woman. That accentuates Palin's youth and vitality; with Brian, she'd be another youthful face; with Katie, another attractive woman. Visually - which is what campaigns think deeply about - the Charlie/Palin combo worked best.

The interview: As expected, Charlie was respectful, if not kind. He seemed at times the professor, prodding his student for the answer he knew she must know, but really didn't. The Bush doctrine? An unintentionally hilarious moment, when the student suddenly realized the prof tossed her a question she hadn't crammed for. It was almost a Ralph Kramden hum-a-na-hum-an-a-hum-a-na moment, but she smiled, recovered, and guessed at what she thought a "doctrine" might be. Charlie patiently explained what it was, but the cat was out of the bag - she didn't know. The other answers - Russia, Georgia, Iran, Israel? She did just fine, although you got the sense that she practiced hard to pronounce the name "Saakashvili" and this beaut - "nucular weapons... given to those hands of Ahmadinejad" - is a keeper. That line about most veeps never having met heads of state? Charlie blew that one - he should have known, as a longtime Capitol Hill reporter, that that was bogus - of course many, if not most, have. Her preparedness for the presidency? Obvious question and well-asked, and I thought her answer was certainly appropriate, and certainly expected (however, I would have loved if she had parroted Letterman's line the other night, that "George W. Bush had set the bar so low that of course I can!" Hey, humor never hurt a candidate, right?)

There's a lot more of this interview, and believe me, we'll see outtakes over and over and over. But so far, neither candidate nor interviewer have done anything they'll live to regret.

(Pix: Getty Images)