“Sarah Palin showed herself as steely and supremely confident” in her first network interview, with ABC’s Charles Gibson, said Lynn Sweet in the Chicago Sun-Times, even though Gibson “at times seemed exasperated at Palin’s rehearsed patter.” Palin “kept herself out of major trouble,” with a minor stumble when Gibson asked her about the Bush Doctrine, and she argued that her unblinking sense of “mission” should compensate for any “resume gaps.”

With the Bush Doctrine question especially, said Blake Hounshell in Foreign Policy, she looked “lost,” like a panicked student who’d crammed for the wrong question on an exam. But when she finally answered Gibson’s question, after he explained the doctrine, her answer was “eminently sensible”—just not in line with her party. “Time to hit the books some more, Sarah.”

“So far there’s something for everyone” in Palin’s ABC interview, said Ted Johnson in Variety online. But with it “coming out in dribs and drabs,” over days and different programs, “it’s hard to make conclusions about Palin.” In the end, “save for a really major screw up or confrontation,” this will probably help her, and John McCain, win a few more days of “Palin-fascination.”