Sarah Palin has yet to do an interview

When political junkies flip through television stations on Sunday morning, they'll find policy-driven interviews with three of the four candidates on the presidential tickets — John McCain, Barack Obama and Joe Biden. They won’t, though, see Sarah Palin.

Less than two months before voters hit the polls, Palin has yet to sit down for or even schedule an issues-oriented interview with any newspaper, magazine or television network.

Meanwhile, the McCain campaign has significantly scaled back the access of the national press he used to jokingly refer to as his “base,” and several speakers, including Palin, took shots at the media in their speeches at last week's Republican convention.

Since her debut in Dayton, Ohio, the McCain campaign has been receiving about 80-100 requests a day from news organizations around the world, according to spokesman Ben Porritt, who said interest in an interview was "through the roof" and that the campaign was going through them now.

"There's no doubt in my mind that the McCain campaign would like to run out on the clock on this," said David Chalian, political director for ABC News.

He expects the campaign will tightly manage access to Palin, but give some national interviews shortly before the Oct. 2 vice presidential debate with Biden, moderated by PBS' Gwen Ifill.

"They know they're not going to get through the next 60 days without doing interviews and being tested and prodded," Chalian said.

But even if Palin does submit to a few carefully selected interviews around the October debate, that means another month before the 37-million-plus viewers who tuned into Palin's speech and others get their first look at how the newcomer to the national stage performs outside of a campaign-controlled setting.

In the meantime, Fox News is rolling out a special (as are other networks): "Gov. Sarah Palin: An American Woman," a one-hour biography hosted by Greta Van Susteren that includes "exclusive video and photos" and "interviews with her family, friends and colleagues" — but not Palin herself.

Palin has already become a ubiquitous presence on newsstands. Presently, her face adorns the cover of traditional newsweeklies Time and Newsweek, Beltway favorites The New Republic and The Weekly Standard, and even celebrity glossies Us Weekly and Ok!.

While everyone from the New Yorker to CNBC has rushed to republish their older interviews with the Alaska governor, it's People magazine that has the only actual interview she’s done since joining to the ticket.

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