Well, not war, but a milder though satisfying combat and a valuable moment of self-redemption. By network standards, Gibson was a lipstickless bulldog. The encounter was combative enough to blow some of her Teflon off.

Much has already been written on segment one of the Gibsonthon, aired on World News Tonight Thursday. Palin didn't recognize the pillar of Bush's foreign policy, and then mischaracterized it. She repeated her absurdity about command of the Alaska National Guard and proximity to Russia. (He might well have asked her what she'd learned from all that proximity.) She declared that she was ready for war with Russia. Mild-mannered Charlie, who is always wishing us a good day, confessed: "I get lost in a blizzard of words there." I've never heard him so blunt.

On the Friday night 20/20 segment, Kate Snow's teaser began: "You discover her story is part fact and part fable." Palin was an earmark queen, winning $27,000,000 for 6000 people. She spent $8,000,000 on a road to nowhere. "Some of her best friends...are reluctant to endorse Sarah Palin the candidate," Snow reported.

That was for openers. Then Gibson continued: "We've got a very sick economy....What are three principal things you would change in the Bush economic plan?" Her answer: "Put government back on the side of the people." She touted "what I did with Wasilla. We cut the personal property tax." Gibson: "You came into a debt-free city and left it with considerable debt."

Gibson: "You've advertised yourselves as the party of change. What would you change in the Bush economic plan?" As she rolled into her preprogrammed cant, drifting away from his question, he had to keep pressing her. Here's what she came up with at last: 1. Reduce taxes. 2. Control spending. 3. Oversight. Now, oversight is only partly an executive prerogative, though it's awfully important. The question she skirted (but so did Gibson) was, why have eight years of Republican rule seen such an abdication of oversight? Where does she intend to find honest regulators when her party--the traditional font of executive appointments--specializes in cronies and other interested parties who buy their way into the ostensible headquarters of regulation? Where was her party when it elevated the likes of Brownie--remember him, the horse association leader who ran FEMA into the ground? Did she call for oversight when she was a mayor or governor?

When she called for "efficiencies," Gibson asked whether that included entitlement programs. "All sectors," she clarified.

He might have asked what's so inefficient about Social Security. He might have asked whether she agreed with her running-mate that Social Security is a "disgrace." Still, to me, Palin sounded unconvincing.

"Why do you keep saying Obama's going to raise taxes?" "What was wrong with the Clinton economic plan? He produced 22,000,000 jobs against 5 million for Bush." Her bulldozer bulled on.

On the Bridge to Nowhere, he was Robert Jordan and William Holden in "The Bridge over the River Kwai" rolled together.

What do I know? I don't, of course, know how any of this played with independents who are disinclined to believe that Charlie Gibson is Satan's playmate. Are they prepared to believe that "Alaska is such a microcosm of the rest of the United States"? Do points 1-3 sound like a plausible remedy for the grave economic malaise and the Bush depredations? Doubletalk, tripletalk.

I suppose there are some independents who are independent not because they're conflicted but because they know little, pay attention to little, and like to style themselves just fine because of their ignorance. Perhaps the fact that she kept talking works to her benefit--she's "strong," which seems to be American for obdurate.

I give Gibson a B+. He didn't ask about Palin's affection for the Alaska Independence Party, the America-hating affiliate of Jerome Corsi's lunatic Constitution Party. There's much more to be said about her grotesque misunderstanding of the melting Arctic ice cap next door--about as close as Russia, in fact. There's vastly more to be known.

Still and all, I'm guessing that Sarah Palin has peaked, and my apprehensions about Charlie Gibson are, for the moment, assuaged. Who'll step up next to fill in the spaces he left?

Update: Thanks to a reader whose first initial is J. for pressing me to clarify what I meant about oversight.