Katie Couric

To call or not to call. That is the question.

With some pundits and analysts predicting a large win by U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, at least one network -- CBS -- and one Web site -- Slate -- are considering calling the election as early as 8 p.m. Eastern Time, long before the last polls close in Gov. Sarah Palin's home state of Alaska at 1 a.m. Eastern Time.

And it's not just the networks, as indicated above. It's the Internet, Web sites, alternative media, blogs.

According to a report in the New York Times, CBS might call it as early as 8 p.m. Eastern Time if certain states line a clear path to one candidate's electoral victory.

A senior vice president of CBS News, Paul Friedman, said the prospects for Barack Obama or John McCain meeting the minimum threshold of electoral votes could be clear as soon as 8 p.m. — before polls in even New York and Rhode Island close, let alone those in Texas and California. At such a moment, determined from a combination of polling data and samples of actual votes, the network could share its preliminary projection with viewers, Mr. Friedman said.

“We could know Virginia at 7,” he said. “We could know Indiana before 8. We could know Florida at 8. We could know Pennsylvania at 8. We could know the whole story of the election with those results. We can’t be in this position of hiding our heads in the sand when the story is obvious.”

Is this the right thing to do? U.S. Rep. John Dingell, Democrat of Michigan doesn't think so.

As the New York Times reports:

With some national polls suggesting that Mr. Obama was heading for a potential electoral landslide, news organizations were preparing for a race that could be far less close than those in 2004 or 2000. The nearest precedent could be 1980, when the networks projected Ronald Reagan to have defeated Jimmy Carter shortly after the polls closed in the East. Later, the secretaries of state from Washington, Oregon and other Western states argued that, as a result of the networks’ early call that year, voter turnout in California dropped by about 2 percent.

Other experts, though, have argued that any impact by the networks on turnout was far outweighed by Mr. Carter’s having made a concession speech shortly after the networks broadcast their results.

It does seem most networks are going to avoid projecting a winner based on exit polls, a practice that burned a few of them in 2004, said the New York Times:

In 2004, early exit poll data suggested that Mr. Kerry was ahead began circulating within newsrooms — and leaking out on Web sites, including Slate’s — early in the afternoon on Election Day. This year, the consortium of six news organizations gathering the exit poll data — NBC, ABC, CBS, Fox, CNN and The Associated Press — have agreed to keep the information under quarantine until 5 p.m.

Representatives of those news organizations will begin analyzing that information at a secret location beginning in late morning, but will have to surrender all electronic devices at the door; even restroom visits will be supervised. There were already signs on Monday that the additional security was paying off.

Last week, I pointed to news reports that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was "annoyed" by Katie Couric's questions during their now somewhat infamous interviews. One such exchange included Couric asking Palin what she read every day; Palin did not answer at the time, but subsequently said the New York Times and the Economist.

Now, Politico reports this: Katie Couric, ambushed by TMZ on a New York street, mimics Sarah Palin's answer to the question of what she reads, and borrows a dig from Politico Playbook: Unlike others, she says, she actually reads the Economist.

Watch it here: 

If you don't want to answer the question, just say so. Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin did last night in the vice presidential debate in St. Louis:

According to a CNN transcript, Palin basically told moderator Gwen Ifill and opponent Joe Biden they could shove her lectern where the sun don't shine. Palin was taking her case to the people:

And I may not answer the questions that either the moderator or you want to hear, but I'm going to talk straight to the American people and let them know my track record also.

The Huffington Post's Sam Stein reports that Palin, oddly speaking of herself in third person, talked later with FOX News' Carl Cameron about answering pesky questions:

"The Sarah Palin in those interviews was a little bit annoyed," she said. "It's like, man, no matter what you say, you are going to get clobbered. If you choose to answer a question, you are going to get clobbered on the answer. If you choose to try to pivot and go to another subject that you believe that Americans want to hear about, you get clobbered for that too."

She helpfully added what Couric should have asked her about (don't forget Palin does have a degree in journalism):

"In those Katie Couric interviews, I did feel that there were lot of things that she was missing in terms of an opportunity to ask what a VP candidate stands for, what the values are represented in our ticket. I wanted to talk about Barack Obama increasing taxes, which would lead to killing jobs. I wanted to talk about his proposal to increase government spending by another trillion dollars. Some of his comments that he's made about the war, that I think may, in my world, disqualify someone from consideration as the next commander in chief. Some of the comments that he has made about Afghanistan -- what we are doing there, supposedly just air raiding villages and killing civilians. That's reckless. I want to talk about things like that. So I guess I have to apologize for being a bit annoyed, but that's also an indication of being outside the Washington elite, outside of the media elite also. I just wanted to talk to Americans without the filter and let them know what we stand for."

Maybe because she was on friendly FOX, Palin just let it all hang out. Darn right she's outside the Washington elite, the media elite. From now on, all interviews are going to be on her terms. You betcha.

Watch Palin here:

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Tune in for More Sarah Palin-Katie Couric? This Time, It's Roe v. Wade

Submitted by Melissa Merz on Tue, 09/30/2008 - 9:16am.

• 2008
• 21st Century Agenda for America
• Bush / GOP
• End of the Conservative Ascendency
• Katie Couric
• Sarah Palin

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is safely tucked away in Sedona, Arizona, preppring for her debate with U.S. Sen. Joe Biden under the watchful eyes of senior officals from U.S. Sen. John McCain's campaign and the Bush Administration.

According to a report by Politico's Jonathan Martin, after a series of serious media fumbles, Palin is going to start being more aggressive and reintroducing herself to the American public by doing more media interviews, this time with decidely friendly, conservative talk radio hosts.

According to Martin: 

To this end, Palin was far more aggressive in another interview with Couric today, this aide said

Sitting with McCain for their first joint interview a week after the widely panned sit-down with Couric, Palin interjected when the CBS anchor brought up a report about the Wasilla Assembly of God, the governor's childhood church and one she still attends at times, seeking to pray gays away from homosexuality.

"Sarah Barracuda showed up today," the aide said, reprising the feisty former point guard's high school basketball nickname and one that has been largely forgotten since her post-convention cosseting.

"We're encouraging CBS to run entire thing," the aide said of today's session. "Run it end to end online."

And while Sarah Barracuda may be back, there's still some unaired one-on-one Palin-Couric interview footage floating around out there and it has people talking:

Of concern to McCain's campaign, however, is a remaining and still-undisclosed clip from Palin's interview with Couric last week that has the political world buzzing.

The Palin aide, after first noting how "infuriating" it was for CBS to purportedly leak word about the gaffe, revealed that it came in response to a question about Supreme Court decisions.

After noting Roe vs. Wade, Palin was apparently unable to discuss any major court cases.

There was no verbal fumbling with this particular question as there was with some others, the aide said, but rather silence.

You can check out the joint interview McCain and Palin did with Couric here:

 

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