TIME Magazine gives Sarah Palin a fair shake

When Gov. Sarah Palin announced on July 3 that she would resign her office later this month, TIME was there to cover it. The news magazine was granted one of seven interviews, four of which went to electronic media (ABC, NBC, CNN and Fox News) and one each to three print media outlets - newspaper (ADN), wire service (AP) and weekly news magazine (Links here).

For the most part, TIME's coverage of the Palin resignation is surprisingly balanced. It includes the interview, a podcast of same, an article by Nancy Gibbs, another piece which speculates on her future and a number of links to Palin items previously published by the magazine, including photo galleries, articles, backgrounders, analysis, speculation and sidebar stuff. There are a couple of flies in the ointment, both of which are linked speculative pieces on the "possible" reasons behind the governor's decision to resign. But overall, TIME's coverage is much more even-handed than we would have expected from the magazine.

The interview is the pick of the litter. Here are some of the better Sarah Palin quotes:

"We win the lawsuits, we win the ethics charges, we win all that — but it comes at such great cost. The distraction, the waste of time and money, the public's time and money — it's insane to continue down this road."

"We have sat down with reporters, showed them proof of the frivolity, the wastefulness — you know, millions of dollars this is costing our state to fight frivolous charges. And countless, countless hours from my staff, our department of law, from me every single day just trying to set the record straight. And it doesn't cost the adversaries a dime in this game."

"But the circumstances have changed, where we have seen this allowance of critics who lie, who stymie progress and who try to paralyze an administration. That hurts a state. That's not fair to the people of the state."

"My intention is to go out and to campaign for people who can effect change all across our nation. I can't do that from the governor's desk no matter how careful I were to be, because we've got lots of double standards hitting us. Other governors probably could travel around and campaign for others and speak candidly, using their First Amendment rights to express what they feel about a person, a candidate, a position. I get hit with ethics-violation charges if I do that."

"President Obama is growing government outrageously, and it's immoral and it's uneconomic, his plan that he tries to sell America."

"His cap-and-trade agenda is a cap-and-tax agenda, and it's going to drive the cost of consumer goods and the cost of energy so extremely high that our nation is going to start exporting even more jobs to China and to other countries..."

"If we're not allowed to drill and develop those conventional sources in this transition period between now and when we can rely more on alternative sources, we're going to become more and more reliant on foreign sources of energy and importing more and more goods because they're going to be cheaper over there to produce, and our country is going to be in a world of hurt."

"President Obama, how are you going to pay for this $1 [trillion] or $2 [trillion] or $3 trillion health-care plan? How are you going to pay off the stimulus package, those borrowed dollars? How are you going to pay for so many things that you are proposing and you are implementing? Americans deserve to know what the plan is to fund these things, health care included."

- JP