The American Spectator

The Spectacle Blog

Throughout the fall, I repeatedly criticized the John McCain campaign for sequestering Sarah Palin from reporters. Palin -- named "Conservative of the Year" by Human Events -- agrees in an interview with John Gizzi:

'The biggest mistake made was that I could have called more shots on this: the opportunities that were not seized to speak to more Americans via media. I was not allowed to do very many interviews, and the interviews that I did were not necessarily those I would have chosen. But I was so thankful to have the opportunity to run with John McCain that I was not going to argue with the strategy decisions that some of his people were making regarding the media contacts?
But if I would have been in charge, I would have wanted to speak to more reporters because that's how you get your message out to the electorate. (Emphasis added.)

If Palin had been allowed to hold press conferences with the reporters covering her on the campaign trail, rather than thrown into high-stakes one-on-one interviews with Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric, it might have made a world of difference in how she was perceived. Palin, a former journalist, knows more about media than most of the Republican "media experts."