Sarah Palin interviews with Katie Couric
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United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
Republican
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
vice presidential
Vice president
A vice president is an officer in government or business who is below a president in rank. The name comes from the Latin vice meaning 'in place of'. In some countries, the vice president is called the deputy president...
nominee Sarah Palin
Sarah Palin
Sarah Louise Palin is an American politician, commentator and author. As the Republican Party nominee for Vice President in the 2008 presidential election, she was the first Alaskan on the national ticket of a major party and first Republican woman nominated for the vice-presidency.She was...
conducted by CBS Evening News
CBS Evening News
CBS Evening News is the flagship nightly television news program of the American television network CBS. The network has broadcast this program since 1948, and has used the CBS Evening News title since 1963....
anchor Katie Couric
Katie Couric
Katherine Anne "Katie" Couric is an American journalist and author. She serves as Special Correspondent for ABC News, contributing to ABC World News, Nightline, 20/20, Good Morning America, This Week and primetime news specials...
. They were recorded and broadcast on television in several programs before the 2008 US presidential election
United States presidential election, 2008
The United States presidential election of 2008 was the 56th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on November 4, 2008. Democrat Barack Obama, then the junior United States Senator from Illinois, defeated Republican John McCain, the senior U.S. Senator from Arizona. Obama received 365...
. Couric received the Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award and the Walter Cronkite Award for Journalism Excellence for the interview.
The interviews were widely believed to have been a disaster for Palin's image and for the McCain Campaign
John McCain presidential campaign, 2008
John McCain, the senior United States Senator from Arizona, launched his second candidacy for the presidency of the United States in an unsuccessful bid to win the 2008 presidential election. His candidacy, in the works for a number of years, was informally announced on February 28, 2007 during a...
, and were cited by many as the cause of a turning of the tide of public opinion against her.
Origins
The Couric interview was preceded by heavy media scrutiny over the McCain campaign's alleged unwillingness to allow press access to Palin.Palin explains in her memoirs
Going Rogue: An American Life
Going Rogue: An American Life is a personal and political memoir of Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska and 2008 Republican candidate for U.S. Vice President. The book became a New York Times #1 bestseller in its first week of release, and remained there for six weeks...
that from the beginning Nicolle Wallace
Nicolle Wallace
Nicolle Wallace is a best-selling author and political commentator. She previously served as communications chief during the presidency of George W. Bush and in his 2004 re-election campaign...
, a senior McCain staffer, pushed for Couric and the CBS Evening News. "The campaign's general strategy involved coming out with a network anchor, someone they felt had treated John well on the trail thus far. My suggestion was that we be consistent with that strategy and start talking to outlets like FOX and the Wall Street Journal. I really didn't have a say in which press I was going to talk to, but for some reason Nicolle seemed compelled to get me on the Katie bandwagon," wrote Palin.
"Katie really likes you," Wallace said according to Palin. "She's a working mom and admires you as a working mom. She has teenage daughters like you. She just relates to you...believe me, I know her very well. I've worked with her...She just has such low self-esteem...She just feels she can't trust anybody. She wants you to like her. You know what? We'll schedule a segment with her, If it doesn't go well, if there's no chemistry, we won't do any others."
Wallace disputed Palin's account "The whole notion there was a conversation where I tried to cajole her into a conversation with Katie [Couric] is fiction". Wallace earlier had praised the channel, “We had no input on usage...we had no ground rules on the interview. I think that’s pretty unprecedented. A lot of people negotiate platforms. We didn’t negotiate platforms or air dates.”
"We were initially supposed to interview her—sit down with her in Philadelphia on Sunday and travel with Senator McCain and Governor Palin on that Monday," Couric recalled. "And then the campaign felt they didn't want a week to go by without hearing anything from Governor Palin because they were doling out the interviews very selectively. So they decided when she was visiting some world leaders at the UN
United Nations
The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...
, that that would be an opportunity for her to sit down that morning and talk to me and it was very serendipitous for us, because we could—that opened the door to a lot of interesting foreign policy questions. And, also, in addition to that, the financial crisis was sort of really heating up during that week, so that was another opportunity. Then, we had scheduled an interview the following Monday, during which we were going to talk about a lot of domestic and social issues, so they gave us tremendous access."
Newsweek reported that at the time of the Couric interview, Palin felt that she had been overmanaged for her first one-on-one debut with a network anchor, Charlie Gibson of ABC and "rebuffed Wallace's help with her Couric interview." McCain advisers said that Palin "did not have the time or focus to prepare for the interview." "She did not say, 'I will not prepare,'” a McCain adviser said. "She just didn’t have a bandwidth to do a mock interview session the way we had prepared before. She was just overloaded."
Format
CBS News producers segmented key moments from the interviews over the course of several days and on multiple formats, including The Early ShowThe Early Show
The Early Show is an American television morning news talk show broadcast by CBS from New York City. The program airs live from 7 to 9 a.m. Eastern Time Monday through Friday; most affiliates in the Central, Mountain, and Pacific time zones air the show on tape-delay from 7 to 9 a.m. local time. ...
, the Evening News
CBS Evening News
CBS Evening News is the flagship nightly television news program of the American television network CBS. The network has broadcast this program since 1948, and has used the CBS Evening News title since 1963....
, and the internet. The New York Observer noted that this "prolonged the interviews’ saliency in the news cycle," and Bill Kristol, a Fox News Channel
Fox News Channel
Fox News Channel , often called Fox News, is a cable and satellite television news channel owned by the Fox Entertainment Group, a subsidiary of News Corporation...
commentator who was a prominent supporter of Palin, referred to the network's seemingly never-ending installments as a “nine-thousand-part interview.”
The initial 40-minute session aired September 24 and 25, 2008. Palin and Couric discussed Rick Davis and the economy. Palin defended her comments on how Alaska's proximity to Russia enhanced her foreign policy experience:
Couric asked Palin her opinion on the emergency economic bailout the Bush administration was proposing:
In another segment aired on September 30, Couric asked Palin about her taste in periodicals:
Fallout
The interviews aired on CBS Evening News showed ratings increases on both nights and clips posted on YouTube garnered more than 10 million views.National Review
National Review
National Review is a biweekly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."Although the print version of the...
editor Rich Lowry called Palin's performance in the interview "dreadful." The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
television critic Alessandra Stanley
Alessandra Stanley
Alessandra Stanley is an American journalist. In 2003 she became the television critic for The New York Times. Stanley was previously co-chief of the paper's Moscow bureau, Rome bureau chief, and as a correspondent for Time. She is the daughter of defense expert Timothy W...
described the interview as "in some ways [...] the worst" interview Palin had done. The exchange on Russia was "startling," her answer "surprisingly wobbly." While it's "perhaps understandable" that Palin "felt nervous," it still "wasn’t a reassuring performance"." Beliefnet
Beliefnet
Beliefnet is a large multi-faith e-community that aims to provide a free forum for religious information and inspiration, spiritual tools, and discussions and dialogue groups. Beliefnet provides information about various religious and spiritual beliefs, ranging from Christian denominations to...
's Rod Dreher
Rod Dreher
Rod Dreher is an American writer and editor. He was a conservative editorial writer and a columnist for The Dallas Morning News, but departed that newspaper in late 2009 to affiliate with the John Templeton Foundation. He has also contributed in the past to The American Conservative and National...
wrote that he was "well and truly embarrassed" for Palin. She's "a good woman who might well be a great governor of Alaska," but this was a "train wreck."
The interviews were later parodied
Saturday Night Live parodies of Sarah Palin
The sketch comedy television show Saturday Night Live aired several sketches parodying then Alaskan Governor and vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin in the lead-up to the 2008 United States presidential election. The sketches featured former cast member Tina Fey, who returned as a guest star to...
on Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live
Saturday Night Live is a live American late-night television sketch comedy and variety show developed by Lorne Michaels and Dick Ebersol. The show premiered on NBC on October 11, 1975, under the original title of NBC's Saturday Night.The show's sketches often parody contemporary American culture...
, with Tina Fey
Tina Fey
Elizabeth Stamatina "Tina" Fey is an American actress, comedian, writer and producer, known for her work on the NBC sketch comedy series Saturday Night Live , the NBC comedy series 30 Rock, and films such as Mean Girls and Baby Mama .Fey first broke into comedy as a featured player in the...
as Palin. While helping Seth Meyers
Seth Meyers
Seth Adam Meyers is an American actor and comedian. He currently serves as head writer for Saturday Night Live and hosts its news parody segment Weekend Update.-Early life:...
write the sketch, Fey decided to use Palin's answer regarding her opinion on the bank bailout nearly verbatim. Fey later said on The Late Show with David Letterman that, in answering that question, Palin "got lost in a corn maze
Corn maze
A corn maze or maize maze is a maze cut out of a corn field. They have become popular tourist attractions in North America, and a way for farms to create tourist income. Many are based on artistic designs such as characters from movies. Corn mazes appear in many different designs. Some mazes are...
," noticeably struggling to find an answer and meandering between several seemingly unrelated topics such as health care, job creation, lowering government spending, international trade, and lowering taxes, ultimately not stating a clear position for or against it.
CNN commentator Jack Cafferty
Jack Cafferty
Jack Cafferty is a CNN commentator and occasional host of specials. In the summer of 2005, Cafferty joined The Situation Room.-Career:...
was particularly critical of Palin's answer to the bailout question, saying that if Palin being "one 72-year-old's heartbeat away from being President of the United States... doesn't scare the hell out of you, it should" and that in all his years of covering politics, "that was one of the most pathetic pieces of tape I have ever seen from someone aspiring to one of the highest offices in this country". The airing of the Couric interviews coincided with "a collapse in her approval ratings and a loss of McCain's gains among white women."
In the immediate aftermath of the interview, Palin voiced irritation she had with Couric's interview:
Palin also criticized Couric's question on what she read:
According to campaign manager Rick Davis, Palin thought the questions would be softer than they were: "She was under the impression the Couric thing was going to be easier than it was. Everyone’s guard was down for the Couric interview." "I knew it didn’t go well the first day, and then we gave her a couple of other segments after that," Palin said in a retrospective with conservative filmmaker John Ziegler
John Ziegler (talk show host)
John Ziegler is a conservative radio talk show host turned documentary film writer/director.Ziegler's most prominent work in radio has been as the evening host of a radio talk show called The John Ziegler Show on KFI AM 640 in Los Angeles, California from January 12, 2004 until November 13, 2007...
on the Couric interview. "My question to the campaign was, after it didn’t go well the first day, why were we going to go back for more? Because of however it works in that upper echelon of power brokering, in the media and with spokespersons, it was told [to] me, yeah, we’re going to go back for more. And going back for more was not a wise decision, either."
After the election, Couric appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman and discussed her interviews with Palin, especially in regards to her question on what newspapers or magazines she read to "stay informed and to understand the world":
COURIC: I’m not sure whether she was afraid to offend certain people, by, she would offend conservatives by saying she read the New York Times.
LETTERMAN: Or people who don’t read. She was afraid of offending people who don’t read. Maybe that was it.
COURIC: Even in the post-election interviews, Dave, that she's done, nobody has really asked her, "Why didn't you answer that question?"
Palin directly responded to that question in Ziegler's interview, "Because, Katie, you're not the center of everybody's universe, maybe that's why they didn't think to ask that question among so many other things to be asked. To me the question was more along the lines of: Do you read? What do you guys do up there? What is it that you read? And perhaps I was just too flippant in my answer back to her..."
Ziegler has called the awarding of the Walter Cronkite award to Couric an "outrage." "What really happened here is that Katie Couric showed Governor Palin that she had an agenda on the abortion issue," Ziegler said. "She kept coming back to it time and time again, obviously trying to trap Governor Palin into saying something stupid or extreme. Everything after that has to be seen in the context of that episode, because Governor Palin never trusted Katie Couric after that. It is very, very obvious that Katie Couric had an agenda and that she is being rewarded for having pursued that agenda."
On the other hand, former Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee
Mike Huckabee
Michael "Mike" Dale Huckabee is an American politician who served as the 44th Governor of Arkansas from 1996 to 2007. He was a candidate in the 2008 United States Republican presidential primaries, finishing second in delegate count and third in both popular vote and number of states won . He won...
defended Couric, "Now I must say I did not think that ... the Katie Couric interviews were unfair. In fact, if anything, Katie Couric was extraordinarily gentle, even helpful. [Palin] just ... I don't know what happened. I can't explain it. It was not a good interview. I'm being charitable."
Steve Schmidt
Steve Schmidt
Steve Schmidt is an American campaign strategist and public relations worker for the U.S. Republican Party. He specializes in political "message development and strategy"...
, McCain's senior campaign strategist and advisor, later reflected on the interview, first by defending Couric by saying that there were no "gotcha questions" or "unfair questions," and then added "I think it was the most consequential interview from a negative perspective that a candidate for national office has gone through, not since Roger Mudd
Roger Mudd
Roger Mudd is a U.S. television journalist and broadcaster, most recently as the primary anchor for The History Channel. Previously, Mudd was weekend and weekday substitute anchor of CBS Evening News, co-anchor of the weekday NBC Nightly News, and hosted NBC's Meet the Press, and NBC's American...
interviewed Ted Kennedy
Ted Kennedy
Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy was a United States Senator from Massachusetts and a member of the Democratic Party. Serving almost 47 years, he was the second most senior member of the Senate when he died and is the fourth-longest-serving senator in United States history...
in the late 1970s." This interview was notable for Kennedy's vague and incoherent response to the question of "[w]hy do you want to be President?" which some say derailed Kennedy's presidential ambitions.
Accepting the Walter Cronkite Award for Special Achievement for National Impact on the 2008
Campaign, Couric said, "I believe one of the reasons that the interview I conducted with Sarah Palin was so impactful is because it wasn’t done through any particular ideological prism. I was so mindful of my personal affect, knowing every head tilt, expression, and follow-up question would be carefully dissected for any evidence of bias. My goal was simply to be a conduit to allow her to express her views and give those watching a chance to come to their own conclusions."
In November 2010, Palin ruled out ever granting Couric another interview, accusing Couric of bias and intentionally trying to create a controversy.