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The Sarah Palin ShowShe's pretty great on television.

By Troy PattersonPosted Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2008, at 8:22 PM ET

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As this strong woman's wild ride through an uncharted frontier continues, it's best to pick our spots when imputing innuendo. That's out of bounds. Stick to the surface, and think about her grin. No less than Roger Ailes—now the main man at Fox News, once a pioneer of political television—recognized the importance of a decent face while working for Richard Nixon. "Generally," Ailes wrote of Nixon in a memo, "he has a very 'Presidential' look and style—he smiles easily (and looks good doing it)." In The Selling of the President 1968, Joe McGinniss reported that Ailes got the job after a casual conversation with Nixon in the green room of the Mike Douglas Show: "It's a shame a man has to use gimmicks like this to get elected," Nixon said of his guest spot. Ailes' reply was revolutionary at the time: "Television is not a gimmick." He was hired on the spot, and here we are.

Correction, Sept. 3, 2008: The article originally and incorrectly stated that Sarah Palin had a family of seven when she made a campaign advertisement in 2006. (Return to the corrected sentence.)