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10 Questions for Sarah PalinWhat ABC News anchor Charles Gibson should ask the candidate.

By Jack ShaferPosted Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2008, at 6:17 PM ET

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Earlier, Jack Shafer predicted that Palin would beat the press by running as the new Spiro Agnew and likened Sarah Palin to a natural disaster.

The McCain campaign believes that Alaska's geographical proximity to Russia has given Palin standing as a foreign policy maven, or something akin. For the purposes of his interview, Gibson could accept this as a given in his preface and ask:

4) Unique among all U.S. governors, you lead a state that shares a border with Russia, a sometimes hostile nation with a nuclear arsenal and new geopolitical ambitions. Given that, how do you evaluate Vladimir Putin?

This untethered question evaporates upon being asked: Palin will respond with generalities from the "trust but verify" stockpile. Gibson's duty will be to wrap her answer in barbed wire and toss it back to her:

That's not very specific, governor. It's the sort of response I might get from the governor of Iowa. Can you share any special insight about Russia and Putin that you've gleaned from your years in office?

The vice president can't be the voice of loyal opposition to the president. She is always his slave, so on the campaign trail Palin will have to recant her previously stated view that global warming is not caused by man and accept McCain's view that it is. Politicians should feel free to change their views, if only because the process by which they change their views informs how they will govern. (Tim Russert used to cruise these waters every Sunday.) Gibson should force her to expand on how her mind was changed by asking:

5) Do you still disagree with John McCain's position that global warming is caused by man? If you've changed your mind in the last couple of weeks, please tell me why you changed your mind and when that happened.

She'll try to filibuster about the need for a vigorous debate on the issue, but Gibson is enough of a pro to make her fold and admit that she has surrendered to McCain's position. This follow-up will expose her as a socialist greenie:

Do you favor McCain's advocacy of a carbon-emission cap-and-trade system to stem climate change? If you've changed your mind in the last couple of weeks, please tell me why you changed your mind and when that happened.

Here's another issue that will require genuflection on Palin's part and force her to show how and why she changes her mind. She supports drilling in ANWR. McCain does not. Gibson should ask:

6) On the campaign trail or as vice president, will you try to persuade Mr. McCain to adopt your position on drilling in ANWR? Or have you adopted his?

Some questions must be asked simply because they're on everybody's mind. Just because the candidate will have a well-rehearsed answer shouldn't disqualify it. So, let's hear Gibson ask:

7) Were you for the bridge to nowhere before you were against it?

She can't shrug off the question or joke her way out of this one. If she's smart—and I think she is—she'll call it the biggest mistake of her political career and one from which she's learned many valuable lessons. Gibson's follow-up should explore the libertarian socialist paradise that Alaska has become and ask her if she intends to block it from the federal trough. Make her give a number for Alaska's fair take, Charlie.

Every candidate hates the press, but no smart candidate vents on the topic without thinking through the consequences. Palin scalded the press in her acceptance speech, saying she wasn't seeking the "good opinion" of Washington "reporters and commentators." The comment may presage a campaign against the press, or it could have been just a populist wisecrack. Gibson could open the topic with this softball:

8) For most in the nation, you're an unknown quantity. What questions should the press be asking you?

She'll probably throw down platitudes about the glories of the First Amendment and salute the newspaper reporters in Anchorage, Fairbanks, and Juneau who have kept government accountable. Blah, blah, blah. If she doesn't become unhinged, Gibson should invite her to with this follow-up:

What questions are out of bounds?

Will she protest the coverage of Bristol Palin's pregnancy, the nature of Trig Palin's birth, the investigation of her role in the firing of her state trooper brother-in-law? Will she draw a circle around her nuclear family that she forbids the press to enter, or will she acknowledge that she has already made every member of her clan a McCain-Palin campaign appendage and that it's too late to complain? If she's smart—and I think she is—she'll laugh and say that the testing only made her family stronger and better prepared for the future. As cheerful as can be, she'll say, I wish that the news about Bristol's pregnancy could have been released on our family's time table, not that of the press that was asking whether Trig was my baby. But that's all passed. I'm as used to sharp-elbow politics as I am to sharp-elbow basketball, so I hold no grudge against anybody, not even the nasty anonymous bloggers.