John McCain to support drilling in ANWR, biggest news from Palin/Gipson interview

John McCain to support drilling in ANWR, the biggest news from the Sarah Palin interview with Charlie Gipson.

The world watched with bated breath awaiting Sarah Palin’s first big interview with the mainstream media. There were no huge surprises in this interview; she performed well by most accounts, not brilliantly but very well for someone in her position in their first big interview. Some of the questions that Charles Gibson asked seemed to be to set up traps for her, as any good reporter would. The nearest she came to a gaff was when he asked her about the Bush doctrine. But, the Bush doctrine means different things to different people. It can mean a preemptive war, it can mean democratization of dictatorships to lessen the chance of war in the future, or it can mean that people who give comfort and support to terrorists should be judged and dealt with the same as the terrorists would be. Sarah Palin then asked Charlie Gibson, what exactly he meant by the Bush doctrine, asking him to be more specific. And again he tried to trap her by instead of answering; he said “well, what does the Bush doctrine mean to you?” She then went on to explained her view of what Bush's policies had been and also her view of some of the mistakes he had made. Sort of a gaff, but maybe not.

Charlie Gibson then pushed her on points of disagreements with John McCain. But keep in mind, and this is very important, during the Democratic primary debates, Joe Biden and Obama disagreed a lot.. So it may turn out that Sarah Phelan was in fact ready to be interviewed all along on what she thought. However, it is the vice president's job to support the presidential candidate's positions. Joe Biden will support the positions of Obama, even know some of those positions he argued about during the debates. That's just the way the system works, the vice president supports the president. So, what she may have been going through for the last few days was not someone coaching her on how to answer questions or how to speak, but simply a detailed analysis of what John McCain's policies are, because those are the policies that she is supposed to go out and support. She seems to be her own woman, but will generally support McCain’s polices just as Joe Biden will support Obamas, no surprise there. However, I believe that she would push her own in some ways, to get her policies at least hearing with John McCain.

And so the biggest news out of this debate came when Charlie Gibson and Sarah Palin were walking down a lane and he was asking her about areas that she disagreed with John McCain on, and specifically asked her about ANWR. She smiled and said well, that's one of the areas that we disagree on. But the smiling face certainly didn't seem like someone who is being educated on an issue and was about to change her mind. The smile was as someone who is very, very sure of her position and knew it would prevail in the end. Charlie then asked her if ANWR was something they had agreed to disagree on. Sarah Palin laughed and smiled and said yes. She then added this caveat. Smiling even more broadly and more sure of herself, she said, I think we'll all be coming together on this in a week or so. The look on her face was not the look of someone who is about to lose an argument.