Gibson and the 'Good-Looking' Governor

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 15, 2008 9:48 AM

For a precious few moments, the presidential campaign wasn't about Sarah Palin's hairstyle or her Naughty Monkey red shoes or her daughter's pregnancy.

Charlie Gibson was all business during three interviews with the Alaska governor last week, pressing her on her qualifications to take over as president and her knowledge of national and international issues. The ABC anchor navigated a minefield in which he would have been slammed for going easy on America's newest celebrity and denounced if he were seen as hectoring her.

When he finally got around to asking what everyone in America has been debating -- how can she juggle five kids and the vice presidency? -- Gibson prefaced it by saying, "Is that a sexist question to ask?"

No national candidate in modern history, not even Hillary Clinton, has ever been lambasted and lionized in quite the way Palin is. Why, for instance, do so many journalists feel compelled to mention her looks? Why are her family choices at the center of a noisy, cable-driven debate? Why are some Republicans convinced that the media apply a different standard to conservative women -- and journalists just as convinced that legitimate reporting is being written off as sexist snobbery?

Gibson managed to cut through that static. Instead of the touchy-feely stuff, there were questions about Iraq, Pakistan, Russia, abortion, gun control and global warming. Gibson did no grandstanding, even as he followed up on questions three or four times. And if he seemed like an unsmiling professor peering over his glasses at an earnest graduate student, well, the first time a vice presidential nominee submits to journalistic scrutiny is an oral exam of sorts.

"The headlines are about her answers, not Charlie's interview, and that was our goal from the start," says ABC Senior Vice President Jeffrey Schneider.

The McCain camp decided early that Palin's first interview should go to one of the network anchors, so she would be seen as hitting major-league pitching before a large audience. Gibson, 65, was viewed as fair-minded, McCain aides said, in part because of the way he has handled several interviews with President Bush. The plan is to give CBS's Katie Couric a chance later on, and perhaps NBC's Brian Williams as well.

The McCain team was satisfied with the interviews but found Gibson a bit condescending at times, a judgment that is firmly in the beholder's eye. New York Times critic Alessandra Stanley said he was "at times supercilious."

But when Palin seemed puzzled by a question about the Bush Doctrine -- which has several possible meanings -- Gibson explained what he meant without making it sound like a gotcha moment. Earlier, however, he did follow up on her answer about not hesitating to become McCain's running mate by wondering: "Didn't that take some hubris?"

Some conservatives criticized Gibson for raising religion by asking Palin whether she considers the Iraq conflict a "holy war." But how can it be unfair to ask about her own words, in a church, that "our national leaders are sending U.S. soldiers on a task that is from God"?

She is likely to have an easier time tomorrow in her second interview, with Fox News's Sean Hannity. The day McCain picked Palin, Hannity declared: "She is a rock star, a rising star, a governor with more experience than Barack Obama ever dreamed of having."

It was conservative pundits who originally talked up Palin. She gained attention last year when a Weekly Standard cruise happened to sail into Alaska and an aide invited the magazine's top editors, Fred Barnes and Bill Kristol, to lunch with the governor.

"We talked for 1 1/2 hours," said Barnes, who lived in Alaska as an elementary school student. "I was impressed enough to write a story. I wasn't thinking of Sarah Palin as a vice presidential running mate for anyone. Nor did I see the star quality she obviously has. I saw her as a smart, very confident, very pretty governor."

His June 2007 profile called Palin "the most popular governor in America," discussed her "Christian faith" and praised her "adherence to principle."

Other conservative commentators took notice; radio host Laura Ingraham called Palin a potential president last summer after meeting her at a luncheon in Alaska. And a number of the men paid tribute to the governor's looks. In February, Rush Limbaugh told a caller from Alaska: "Yeah, plus she's a housewife; before that, she's a babe. I saw a picture. . . . The babe is the icing-on-the-cake aspect, something the Democrats can't claim on their side."

The same month, National Review writer Stephen Sprueill called Palin a "solidly conservative (and ridiculously good-looking) Republican." In the American Spectator, Thomas Cheplick wrote that "the beautiful conservative Republican governor of Alaska would be an ideal choice" for vice president. Last fall, a Wonkette blogger called Palin "the hottest governor in all 50 states" and "my total girl crush."

A similar thread runs through the recent coverage. "To start with the obvious, she's attractive," writes Time's Joe Klein. The Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan calls Palin "this beautiful girl." "Large numbers of Americans think she's hot," said Salon's Gary Kamiya, whose piece was accompanied by a photo illustration of Palin as a dominatrix.

"She's sexy. Men want a sexy woman," CNBC's Donny Deutsch told viewers. "Women want to idealize about a sexy woman. . . . She's a lioness. . . . Women want to be her. Men want to mate with her." Slate's David Plotz confessed that he's been dreaming about Palin and that "a couple of conservative men I know have mentioned that they've been having sexual fantasies about the Alaska governor."

What, exactly, is going on here?

"The fact that she's a fairly youthful woman adds to her appeal," San Francisco Chronicle reporter Carolyn Hochhead says. "It has nothing to do with being qualified for vice president. It's a fact of human nature. Women routinely use their looks, and men routinely fall for it."

That, of course, doesn't mean that journalists have to buy into the narrative. "The media should focus on her policies rather than her looks," Hochhead says. "But if her looks are news, I guess that's part of the story."

Peggy Drexler, who wrote a Huffington Post blog about "the babe factor," calls the coverage "demeaning to other women. Most women have tried very hard to be perceived as people who are capable of producing. But the culture is the way it is."

Palin, she says, has played up her appearance with her 1980s beauty-pageant photo and by posing for Vogue: "She is the Playboy fantasy of the nurse with her hair up in her prim little suit, and then the hair comes down and she's the hot babe."

For 18 months, Obama's opponents complained that the media treated him like a celebrity. McCain even aired an ad likening him to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears. Now Obama is being overshadowed by a new superstar, a woman with an intriguing life story, and liberals are complaining that Palin is getting a pass on the issues.

Palin's defenders haven't hesitated to accuse journalists (as well as Democrats) who question her record of ganging up on a woman. And there has been a degree of piling on, even as she remained secluded from the press. At times, the media hubbub has threatened to drown out the original concern about Palin, voiced when the insta-pundits were calling her selection a reckless gamble: Is she qualified to serve as a potential president? In Alaska, Gibson took the country back to that basic question.

Steamy Messages

The Miami Herald is investigating a series of romantic e-mails between its former education reporter and a school official who is now the region's incoming schools superintendent.

In one message, Tania Luzuriaga, now with the Boston Globe, wrote Alberto Carvalho: "Will you be completely offended if I leap into your arms the next time I see you (place permitting)? Like in the movies, with arms and legs wrapped around. . . . Love, love, love you." In another, Luzuriaga apologized for not properly crediting him in a story, saying, "If it doesn't compromise us professionally, we ought to act in ways that help one another." There are also notes about plans to travel together. Carvalho says he doesn't recall seeing the messages; Luzuriaga did not return a phone call.

"If these e-mails are real, this violates some of the most basic rules of our profession," Herald Executive Editor Anders Gyllenhaal told his paper.

More reviews for Charlie. At National Review, Kathryn Jean Lopez is perfectly pleased with the Gibson interviews:

"Why did the McCain campaign let this interview become such a big event? I suspect that before long there will be many interviews and this will seem like less of the event it appears now. And it may long be forgotten if so. Especially if subsequent interviews reinforce what the first did, what the acceptance speech did, what rally speeches have: that this is an authentic American, ready to serve her country. People seem to like the sense they have about her. And why wouldn't they? . . .

"In her first national interview since entering the race, after a whirlwind two weeks away from home and on the day she was sending her first-born off to Iraq, Gibson did his job and gave her a hard time. And she did hers and refused to get flustered. . . . No one should try to over coach her. Let Sarah be Sarah."

But David Frum breaks with his colleagues on the right: "She really could be president! And here's where my fellow conservatives really worry me . . .

"They are so attracted by the symbolism of the selection that they show no concern -- never mind for her executive competence -- even for her views. There's a photograph circulating on conservative blogs that shows Palin lounging on a motorcycle, paired with another of Obama in a helmet on a bicycle. It's headed: 'All you need to know.' Personally I need to know a little more. That's not even insufficient information. It's anti-information -- a denial that information matters."

Conservatives, not caring deeply about a candidate's foreign policy views? Hard to imagine.

Atlantic's James Fallows likens Palin to a non-sports fan who suddenly has to talk about sports:

"It is embarrassing to have to spell this out, but for the record let me explain why Gov. Palin's answer to the 'Bush Doctrine' . . . implies a disqualifying lack of preparation for the job . . .

"What Sarah Palin revealed is that she has not been interested enough in world affairs to become minimally conversant with the issues. Many people in our great land might have difficulty defining the "Bush Doctrine" exactly. But not to recognize the name, as obviously was the case for Palin, indicates not a failure of last-minute cramming but a lack of attention to any foreign-policy discussion whatsoever in the last seven years."

The Nation's Richard Kim calls Palin "alarmingly ignorant," saying: "Even if Palin looked like a moose in headlights, even if she eventually confused preventive and preemptive war -- it might not matter. Palin ultimately hit the right emotional notes -- the same rah-rah points that secured the Bush doctrine in the first place. 1) Islam=evil; 2) Defend the country at all costs. Duty before actual security; 3) the President is right and has to be trusted and supported.

"I'm not suggesting that Palin's blinking response was some kind of canny, planned strategery -- but on a gut level, when pressed and vulnerable, she intuitively echoed the Bush doctrine's original appeal -- even if she could not articulate it's rationale much less defend it."

A well-reported NYT piece on Palin's Alaska record:

"When there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship.

"A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency.

Ms. Havemeister was one of at least five schoolmates Ms. Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding their private sector wages . . .

"In 1997, Ms. Palin fired the longtime city attorney, Richard Deuser, after he issued the stop-work order on a home being built by Don Showers, another of her campaign supporters. Your attorney, Mr. Showers told Ms. Palin, is costing me lots of money."

WP has more details: "She clashed with Police Chief Irl Stambaugh over his push for moving bar closing time from 5 a.m. to 2 a.m. and for his opposition to state legislation to allow people to carry guns in banks and bars. In notes that he took during a meeting in Palin's first week on the job, Stambaugh wrote that the new mayor told him 'that the NRA didn't like me and that they wanted change.' " He was soon fired.

File this HuffPost piece under "even Karl Rove says":

"When Karl Rove is saying your political ads have gone too far, you know you must be doing something dishonest.

"The former Bush chief strategist, appearing on Fox News Sunday, said that John McCain had stretched the truth in his recent round of attacks against Barack Obama, in the process opening up the Arizonan to a round of effective counter-attacks."

An intriguing column by the Oakland Tribune's Tammerlin Drummond on a possible double standard:

"What if the Democratic Party had nominated an African-American woman for vice president and it later turned out that her unmarried 17-year-old daughter was five months pregnant?

"If during the Democratic National Convention in Denver, she paraded young Kinshasa and her flustered-looking baby daddy Leroy before thousands of convention delegates and millions of TV viewers? While members of the family passed the youngest addition, a 5-month-old baby with Down syndrome, from person to person like a rag doll?

"Would the media be gushingly referring to Leroy -- who had described himself as an N- and a thug on his MySpace site and who said he didn't want kids -- as Kinshasa's 'fiance?'

"What's more likely is that we would suddenly be deluged with stories about the disastrously high pregnancy rates among black teens."

Finally, I had missed this little scandal at the Atlantic, which leaves Jeffrey Goldberg disgusted:

"Like others at the Atlantic, I was appalled to read about the actions of Jill Greenberg, the freelance photographer who took the cover portrait that illustrates my article about John McCain. Greenberg doctored photographs of McCain she took during her Atlantic-arranged shoot, which took place last month in Las Vegas. She has posted these doctored photographs on her website, which you can go find yourself, if you must. Suffice it to say that her 'art' is juvenile, and on occasion repulsive. This is not the issue, of course; the issue is that she betrayed this magazine, and disgraced her profession."

Goldberg's post goes on to quote from an account of the incident that appeared in the New York Post, which broke the story:

"Greenberg also crowed that she had tricked McCain into standing over a strobe light placed on the floor - turning the septuagenarian's face into a horror show of shadows.

"Asking McCain to 'please come over here' for a final shot, Greenberg pretended to be using a standard modeling light.

"The resulting photos depict McCain as devilish, with bulging brows and washed-out skin. 'He had no idea he was being lit from below,' Greenberg said, adding that none of his entourage picked up on the light switch either. 'I guess they're not very sophisticated,' she said."

The Atlantic's editor calls her behavior "outrageous." I can think of a few other adjectives.