Two weeks ago, People magazine was granted an exclusive interview with Senator John McCain’s new running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, who spoke about motherhood and career, life in Alaska and the historic nature of her candidacy.
She has not given an interview since, eschewing the traditional television news circuit traveled by a vice-presidential nominee.
Sarah Palin will break that news media blackout on Thursday, when she will begin two days of interviews by the ABC News anchor Charles Gibson.
The sessions could be the first test of Sarah Palin’s ability to parry substantive questions on foreign and domestic policy, and as she flew back to Alaska on Wednesday, she brought with her a squad of john McCain’s top policy advisers to help her prepare. In a broader sense, the interviews will also provide fresh material for what is now an intense war between the campaigns to define Sarah Palin in the public mind, a battle that both campaigns consider potentially critical to the election outcome.
“The fight is over how she is going to be defined in the eyes of the American public,” said Terry Nelson, John McCain’s former campaign manager. “She’s been introduced, but all the information about her has not been introduced, and once that information comes to light people are going to draw conclusions about her, and the campaigns are fighting to shape the conclusions.”
With new reports coming out daily about Sarah Palin’s record in Alaska, and a more aggressive offensive from Senator Barack Obama’s campaign, John McCain’s team has issued a partywide, all-hands-on-deck.
It has hired several veterans from President Bush’s campaigns, making them part of a team dedicated to defending Sarah Palin from unsubstantiated Internet rumors, Democratic attacks and potentially damaging news reports about her record produced by the investigative journalists now in Alaska.
“She’s a dynamic agent for change, the Democrats recognize this, and there is this race now to paint a picture of her which is not true,” said Brian Jones, who resigned as John McCain’s communications director in 2007 but returned this week to help in the effort to bolster Sarah Palin.
John McCain’s campaign released an advertisement on Wednesday accusing Barack Obama of trying “to destroy” Sarah Palin, and featuring images of scavenging wolves and an assertion that Democratic operatives are researching Sarah Palin in Alaska. (The advertisement cited a report by FactCheck.org that was critical of “completely false” attacks on Sarah Palin, but failed to note that the report was referring to Internet rumors not linked to Barack Obama’s campaign.)
The McCain campaign is regularly battling reports from news organizations that have the potential to undermine the image that it has presented of Sarah Palin as a reformer.
On Wednesday, a new report on Politico.com detailed Sarah Palin’s requests for federal appropriations as governor, including money for studies on the mating habits of crabs and the DNA of harbor seals, the very sorts of pet spending projects John McCain has lampooned.
John McCain’s campaign has dispatched another team to Alaska to respond more rapidly to such reports. It is headed by Taylor Griffin, who had worked for President Bush’s 2004 campaign. Another former Bush campaign aide, Tracey Schmitt, is now Sarah Palin’s traveling press secretary.
Tucker Eskew, a veteran of Mr. Bush’s primary season campaign against John McCain, has been advising Sarah Palin this week, as she has hopped between S.U.V.s and planes, all the while reading briefing materials or receiving tutorials from policy advisers who have dipped on and off the campaign trail to visit with her.
On Wednesday night, three of them were on the plane to Alaska with Sarah Palin: Douglas Holtz-Eakin, John McCain’s economic adviser; Steve Biegun, a former staff member of Mr. Bush’s National Security Council who has taken leave from his Ford Motors job to advise Sarah Palin; and Randy Scheunemann, John McCain’s senior foreign policy adviser.
Also accompanying Sarah Palin to Alaska as she prepared for her interview was Nicolle Wallace, a communications director for Mr. Bush’s 2004 campaign and, later, his White House. Ms. Wallace’s husband, Mark Wallace, Mr. Bush’s deputy campaign manager in 2004, is helping prepare Sarah Palin for the debates.
For now, the preparation for the debate and the sessions with Mr. Gibson are one and the same. Aides have developed a set of presumed questions and answers that they are walking Ms. Palin through.
Aides traveling with Sarah Palin have reported back to associates that she is a fast study — asking few questions of her policy briefers but quickly repeating back their main points — who already has considerable ease and experience before cameras.
A former aide in Alaska who had helped prepare Ms. Palin for her campaign debates there said she had a talent for distilling information into digestible sound bites. The aide said she generally prefers light preparatory materials to heavy briefing books, and prefers walking through potential questions and answers with aides to holding mock sessions.
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