Politics

Palin: I Should Have Done More Interviews

By Brian Montopoli

December 22, 2008 / 6:10 PM EST / CBS News

Former GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin said in an interview with conservative media outlet Human Events today that she wishes she had done more interviews after being tapped as John McCain's running mate.

(AP Photo/Al Grillo)

"I was not allowed to do very many interviews, and the interviews that I did were not necessarily those I would have chosen," Palin said. "But I was so thankful to have the opportunity to run with John McCain that I was not going to argue with the strategy decisions that some of his people were making...But if I would have been in charge, I would have wanted to speak to more reporters because that's how you get your message out to the electorate."

Palin suggested that she was frustrated that "there were so many things that were outside of my control" during the campaign.

"I was in a campaign in which I did not know the people individually running the campaign," she said. "So I had to put my life, my career, my family, and my reputation in their hands. That's kind of a scary thing to do when you don't know the people you are working with."

"Now I have all the faith in the world in Sen. McCain and his family," Palin added. "But some of the folks around him I did not know and so it was a kind of a risky thing for me to put my faith in the decisions they were making on my behalf."

Asked if she planned to run for Senate in 2010, Palin said, "that's not in my sites." The Alaska governor also said she would have opposed the auto bailout had she had a vote.

"Picking winners and losers in Washington, D.C., is a dangerous thing to do when you're talking about a system that supposed to be based on free enterprise," said Palin. "When you talk about rewarding for work ethic and good management decisions and then consequences are the results of the opposite of that, and those decisions lead to some mistakes that are made in some industries, taxpayer bailouts should not be looked to as the be-all, end-all solutions."