Sarah Palin: My Life is Like a Reality Show
In an interview set to air tomorrow, Wednesday and Friday on ABC, Palin told Barbara Walters that she doesn't believe hosting a talk show would be in the "best interests" of her family.
"I would not ever want to put my kids through such a thing," she told Walters. "Our life has become kind of a reality show."
Palin also told Walters she would give President Obama a four-out-of-ten in his performance. She argued that the president has moved away from the "free enterprise principles that built our country" and, echoing former Vice President Dick Cheney, suggested he is "dithering" in making a decision on a way forward in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Other highlights from the interview:
• On whether Mr. Obama is lying about "death panels" in the health care bill: "He is not lying, in that those two words will not be found in any of those thousands of pages of different variations of the health care bill. No, death panel isn't there. But he's incorrect, and he is disingenuous."
• On running for president in 2012: "That certainly isn't on my radar screen right now. [But] when you consider some of the ordinary turning into extraordinary events that have happened in my life, I am not one to predict what will happen in a few years."
• On quitting as Alaska governor: "I was heading into a lame duck session, that final year in office, and most normal politicians, what they do, knowing that they're not going to run again, they're in that lame duck ... that, that situation, they milk it. They collect the paycheck. My administration was inundated, and paralyzed by those who were filing these frivolous lawsuits, and, and, um, ethics violation charges. And it was unfair to Alaskans. So I knew that what we were doing was right."
• On former McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt: "…he wanted to talk about what I eat. And he got it all wrong anyway, assuming that I was on the Atkins diet. And I tried to correct him, and, and he wouldn't hear any of it. He thought that that was his role, was to shape me, even my diet, according to what he wanted in this package."
• On her daughter Bristol's pregnancy: "Truthfully, we were devastated…So, yeah, a parent's responsibility, perhaps feeling that I, I let her down. I think that's just a mother's nature."
• Also on Johnston, who recently posed for Playgirl magazine: "Levi's making some irresponsible decisions right now with money, and with career. I guess his handlers are sort of ushering in, him into this new line of work, with the, with the porn, and with the things that he's involved in right now. He's a kid who's misguided, and he's kind of lost right now."
• On her interview with CBS' Katie Couric, who asked Palin what magazines and newspapers she reads: ""Unfortunately, I was wearing my annoyance on my sleeve, and I shouldn't have done that, because it seemed to me that she was asking, 'Do you read? How, up there in Alaska, in this kind of nomadic, Neanderthal atmosphere that you live in, how are you connected to the world?' When I had just done an op-ed, for instance, in her hometown newspaper, The New York Times. I had just been interviewed by all those national media outlets. And that surprised me that she hadn't done that homework. Very unprofessional of me, though. My fault, my bad, that I answered the way that I answered, and that was kind of with that proverbial roll of the eyes, like, 'Are you kidding me? Are you really asking me that?'"
You can read more from the interview here and here and watch it on ABC's "Good Morning America", "World News," "Nightline" and "20/20" this week.