ABC’s Charlie Gibson scored a major media coup last Friday, when senior McCain adviser Steve Schmidt offered him exclusive access to Republican vice presidential pick Sarah Palin. Despite essentially being an unknown candidate, Palin has yet to participate in any major interviews.
Since Friday’s announcement, every media outlet worth its salt has released its own list of suggested questions for Gibson to ask Palin. Google “questions to ask Sarah Palin” and you’ll get 289,000 hits. The voting public is hungry to get straight answers from Palin. Hundreds of readers submitted questions to ABC’s World News blog, and NPR got more than 800 suggestions on its own blog post when it called for questions. At one point yesterday, the blog’s monitors, who approve each comment, said they were completely overwhelmed by readers’ submissions.
Some writers have imagined the entire interview, like Slate’s media critic Jack Shafer, who even suggests follow-up questions for Gibson to ask when Palin starts getting evasive with the original question line.
This assumes, of course, that Gibson will ask hard-hitting questions. He has every reason to do so, because he was soundly criticized for the Democratic primary debate he co-anchored that critics claim avoided substantive topics.
But sometimes realities get in the way of one’s best intentions. Gibson will interview Palin multiple times on Thursday and Friday, so he can’t begin with tough topics. The McCain camp has a notably itchy “cancel” finger—it stopped the candidate’s interview with today’s premier softball question tosser, Larry King, after fellow CNN anchor Campbell Brown pushed McCain advisor Tucker Bounds about Sarah Palin’s leadership experience. Charlie Gibson also has a relationship with the McCain campaign, which Gibson has a strong interest to preserve. He  was the only major network anchor to secure an interview with John McCain during the Republican National Convention.
ABC World News Executive Producer Jon Banner said all questions were on the table for the Gibson/Palin interview. But when it comes to interviewing, it’s all about how you phrase the questions you ask. We have a prediction of what Gibson is working on during his flight up to Alaska. Here are 10 questions undoubtedly on his list.