Last night was Gov. Sarah Palin’s first real interview since accepting the nomination given to Charlie Gibson on ABC. One thing is for sure, ABC is milking this thing for all it is worth with a second night tonight, a special on 20/20 and I believe they also ran something on Nightline last evening.

How did she do? Not surprising those who like Barack Obama ripped her to shreds, those who like her thought she did wonderful. The rest of agree she did fine but not amazing. She met expectations and will live on another day.

The largest point of contention would have to be her answer on respecting Pakistan’s territorial border despite intelligence suggesting we could squash a threat. She answered it in the best way a person can. She suggested she would consider it but made no verbose statements about racing in to invade the nation or bomb them at will. She of course received an enormous amount of criticism in the blogs for it but she aligned her position with that of McCain who has chastised colleagues both Democrat and Republican who have gone further.

In the end it is the answer you give about an ally or at least a nation you WANT to be an ally. Of course, any sane American leader would use the military to take out bin Laden or another threat and deal with the consequences later of going across the border. With that said, no sane politician would run around rubbing that fact into Pakistan’s face. Gibson kept trying hard to nail her to that kind of position, she refused to do it. So as a viewer and American you want to hear “yes, of course, I would do anything to protect America.” As a diplomat, she answered it correctly.

Gibson pushed Palin on the Bush doctrine. While the interview made it seem like she did not quite know what it was, the reality is the Bush doctrine has come to mean a lot of things. Gibson’s definition meets the standard idea of pre-emptive War. A blanket “yes of course I do” without qualifying it though could lead to a host of other problems. Her answer did not spark an enormous amount of confidence in her knowledge or experience, she could have defined it herself and gone out on a limb. That would have shown she knew what she was talking about. Instead she deferred and waited for Gibson to define. That put him in a position of authority and power. Not good for her. It wasn’t a complete blow, it wasn’t great either.

Finally Gibson brought up comments she made in a church that the left has used to make her out to be some kind of radical who believes God destined the Iraq War. Here Palin hit it out of the park by saying that her words were echoes of Abraham Lincoln’s. Gibson tried to follow-up, but it kind of fell flat. It is hard to argue with anyone when they bring up Lincoln, isn’t it?

In short, those who support her will find little to stop supporting her, those who hate her will find little to love. The rest of the population, who remember a time when the Vice President wasn’t the dominating Cheney type, probably had their expectations met and won’t have their vote swayed either way.

We will see what happens when Palin is up against a rapid fire, ego driven Matthews type and not the laid back, smug and aloof journalist type of Gibson.