Interview with Carl Cameron on Fox News' "Hannity & Colmes"

CAMERON: A couple questions about past interviews.

PALIN: Yes.

CAMERON: This morning -- last night when we were in the spin room and people came flowing in there, and one of the questions that a lot of folks said was, you know, OK, where was the Governor Palin in Katie Couric's interview that just debated and arguably defeated Joe Biden in a vice presidential debate?

There's been some criticism as I know you know. What happened? Go ahead, explain it to us.

PALIN: Well, OK, I'll tell you honestly. The Sarah Palin in those interviews was a little bit annoyed because it's like me, no matter what you say, you're going to get clobbered. If you choose to answer a question, you're going to get clobbered on the answer.

If you choose to try to pivot and go on to another subject that you believe that Americans want to hear about, you'll get clobbered for that, too.

But in those Katie Couric interviews, I did feel that there were a lot of things that she was missing in terms of an opportunity to ask what a VP candidate stands for, what the values are represented in our ticket.

I wanted to talk about Barack Obama increasing taxes, which will lead to killing jobs. I wanted to talk about his proposal to increase government spending by another trillion dollars, some of his comments that he's made about the war that, I think, made -- in my world disqualifies someone for consideration as the next commander in chief, some of the comments that he's made about Afghanistan, what we're doing there, supposedly just air raiding villages and killing civilians.

That's reckless. And I wanted to talk about things like that. So I guess I have to apologize for being a bit annoyed, but that's also an indication of being outside of that Washington elite, outside of the media elite, also, and just wanted to talk to Americans without the filter, and let them know what we stand for.

CAMERON: OK, so, at the risk of annoying you, when you were asked, you know, what do you read, newspapers and magazines.

PALIN: Yes. Yes.

CAMERON: . you didn't answer it, or you said, I have all kinds of resources.

PALIN: Right. Right. Right.

CAMERON: Well, what do you read? I mean.

PALIN: I read the same things that other people across the country read, including the "New York Times" and the "Wall Street Journal" and "The Economist," and some of these publications that we've recently been interviewed through up there in Alaska because of everything that we're doing with oil and gas.

A lot of the investment publications, especially, are interviewing us, asking us how are we being so successful up there and contributing to our nation's step toward energy independence.

CAMERON: Sure.

PALIN: So my response to her, I guess, it was kind of flippant but I was sort of taken aback like the suggestion was you're way up there in a far away place in Alaska. Do you know that there are publications in the rest of the world that are read by many?

And I was taken aback by that, because, I don't know, the suggestion just - - a little bit of -- perhaps we're not in tune with the rest of the world.

CAMERON: Right. Well, I mean the idea is not to do gotcha questions, but you've heard the question already from Katie about Supreme Court decisions that you disagree with.

PALIN: Oh yes.

CAMERON: As a conservative.

PALIN: Right.

CAMERON: There are folks in the Republican Party who would expect the vice presidential nominee.

PALIN: Sure.

CAMERON: . to understand judicial conservatism and have something they might object to so.

PALIN: And that's fair, right. And on that one, true, I shouldn't have been so flippant and just sort of brushed aside that because that was an important question, and I should have answered it, and yes, I can cite a lot of cases that I absolutely disagree with the Supreme Court on.

CAMERON: Is there one particularly or a couple or something that sort of.

PALIN: A couple.

CAMERON: . exemplifies or illustrates what your sort of.

PALIN: Sure.

CAMERON: . judicial policy would be?

PALIN: A recent one, Kennedy versus Louisiana where the Supreme Court will tell a state that they can't impose the death penalty even on heinous crime of a repeat child rapist.

A state, its rights were taken away by the Supreme Court, and we would not be able to decide for ourselves whether the death penalty in a case like that could be implemented or not. That one I'm certainly not a supporter of that decision.

The Kilo case, also, with eminent domain, that affects me as a governor and it affected me as a mayor also. Private property rights are so precious in this nation, and for the Supreme Court to have sided with government instead of the people, the property owners on that, that was frustrating.

And then another one personally affecting me also, the Exxon Valdez oil spill deciding with the oil company as they decimated Alaska's coastline and much of our fisheries and much of our coastal communities' livelihood, the people who live there.

And they sided with Exxon on the punishment, the punitive damage that was to be awarded. Exxon won on that one.

CAMERON: So.

PALIN: In a sense, that was frustrating.

CAMERON: Governor, people hear that answer, and -- they're going to be mystified and say wait a minute, that's the Sarah Palin that we saw when you first joined the ticket, that when you hit the campaign trail that invigorated Republicans.

I mean is this going to boil down to one of those suggestions where it's -- Palin versus the press, and it depends on who asks the question.

PALIN: Oh that would be the worst strategy ever that I could think of, and I have a journalism degree, so I know how you guys work also.

I'll tell you what I need to do is commit to not being so annoyed and impatient with mainstream media, and I will make that commitment, because I do understand that that is how I speak to the American people in a position like this.

I speak to you and through you, and that way that message is received by the American people. So I apologize for the -- I guess flippant response that I gave through that interview on a couple of questions.

I'm going to try harder, but I would ask also then that the media tries a little bit harder also and that this is a two-way street, that there's fairness, just objectivity and fairness and truth.

That's all Americans ask for.

CAMERON: Objectivity? Objectivity? Fairness?

PALIN: Objectivity. And that is all Americans ask for.

CAMERON: From the media?

PALIN: . as we send our young men and women overseas in a war zone to fight for democracy.

CAMERON: Sure.

PALIN: . and freedoms including freedom of the press, we've really got to have a mutually beneficial relationship here with those fighting for the freedom of the press. And then the press so not taking advantage of that, and exploiting a situation that perhaps that they would want to capture and abuse the privilege.

We just want truth, we want fairness, and we want that balance.