The Get.(The Talk of the Town)

David Westin has served as the president of ABC News for about eleven years. He oversees the journalism of "Nightline," "World News with Charles Gibson," and "20/20." The Walt Disney Company owns ABC, however, and, at times, Westin has seemed to struggle to police the foggy border between news and entertainment. For example, in 2000--two Presidential-election cycles ago--he permitted the actor Leonardo DiCaprio to film a talk with President Clinton, to commemorate Earth Day. After this decision attracted criticism, on the ground that it was a perversion of journalism, Westin wrote an e-mail to colleagues in which he denied that he had ever regarded the program as an "interview." It couldn't have been, because having movie stars conduct interviews would be a violation of professional journalistic standards, and "no one is that stupid." In a joking aside, Westin added, "All roles of journalists must be played by journalists (duh!)."

Last week on ABC, the role of the journalist was played by a journalist, but otherwise it was on with the show. The network's headliner was Governor Sarah Palin, of Alaska, the Republican Party's nominee for Vice-President of the United States. For fourteen days following her nomination, on August 29th, the Governor had appeared at no press conferences and had granted no interviews. (During her media purdah, Senator Joseph Biden, the Democratic Party's nominee for Vice-President, gave fifty-four interviews or press conferences.) Finally, after negotiations, Palin agreed to receive Gibson in her home state, and to answer his questions. In lavish promotional advertisements, ABC referred to this exclusive as "the interview everybody has been waiting for." The double-entendre was as close as Westin came to acknowledging his collaboration with the McCain campaign's decision to sequester Palin until the potent anniversary date of September 11th; on that day, Palin's eldest son, a recent Army enlistee, deployed for Iraq at a brigade departure ceremony, an event captured by ABC's cameras, for broadcast on the evening news.

There is no shame in winning an exclusive interview with a reclusive subject, of course, and David Westin is hardly responsible for the McCain campaign's cynical handling of its Eliza Doolittle problem, but if he had managed his network's "get" more responsibly he might have expelled its odor of compromise. The occasion of the Alaska governor's debut before the national media called for a lightly edited, extended one-on-one, aired on a single night, so that American voters might assess the candidate's answers and demeanor in full. Instead, apparently to maximize ratings and branding opportunities, ABC doled out Palin sound bites on six network broadcasts over two days, as well as in supplemental ABC Radio and Web releases. In the end, Westin exploited the Governor's moose-hunting, baby-juggling appeal as if she were a magnetic contestant on one of the network's prime-time reality shows--"Extreme Makeover: White House Edition."

By now, perhaps, it is quixotic to express disenchantment about the celebrity narratives--the "personal stories"--that dominate American politics. After all, John McCain selected Palin only because he was searching for a counter to Barack Obama's own television-lit charisma juggernaut. Still, as it turns out, not all pop idols are equally prepared to lead a nuclear-armed nation.

Palin's answers to Gibson's questions made it clear that all the briefings and all the cramming that she could absorb in two weeks were not enough to endow her with what her resume so plainly indicated that she lacked: sufficient exposure to national-security issues to serve as President, should she be required to do so. She confirmed that she has never been abroad, apart from visits to Canada and Mexico, and a recent trip "that changed my life" to Kuwait and Germany, where she met American soldiers. She also said that she has never had occasion to meet a foreign head of state. She added, a little defensively, "If you go back in history and if you ask that question of many Vice-Presidents, they may have the same ...