Sarah Palin walked into the studio. Both women hugged awkwardly. Oprah tried to get the uncomfortable stuff out of the way (she hadn’t invited Palin to her show during the presidential campaign). “So at the time of the campaign when everybody was saying I was snubbing you, you didn’t even know about it?” Oprah asked, trying not to seem stiff. “It didn’t register. No offense to you,” Palin said, playful and confident, “but it wasn’t the center of my universe.” Both women laughed.

This is going to be great, I thought. Oprah is one of the best interviewers on television history. I’ll never forget how in 1993 she asked Michael Jackson if he was still a virgin, just like that. The explosive exchanges, the deep analysis, and the career-ruining confessions would soon come. I was sure Oprah would get Palin to open up about her personal life and then nail her to the wall with a couple of sharp impolite inquiries with political consequences. Such is Oprah’s style: chummy at first, but then she bites.

And there would certainly be some hard-hitting questions this time around, I thought. After all, both women stand for radically different things. But eventually the first commercial break came, and then the second one, and yet the interview wasn’t taking off. Palin was candidly smiling, but was simply not falling prey to Oprah’s seduction. Then when it became clear that Palin was no longer the same person she’d been during the campaign. She had kept her main traits--that bubbly quality that makes her so appealing to some and so annoying to others--but her public persona seemed shrewder, craftier and smoother. Soon it became clear that unlike with The Baddest Man on the Planet, Mike Tyson, just a few weeks ago, there was no way Oprah would get Palin to open up.

Without Palin’s guard down, Oprah had no chance to work her magic. See, Oprah’s main strength is her ability to find the universal pathos in daly occurrences. There’s a common sense about Oprah’s pain and anger that when she cries, you feel like you better cry too because otherwise you are clearly out of step with the world. Oprah knows just what to be afraid of, what to be concerned about, what to be angered by, and what to be pained by. That’s why she has such sway with the American public.

The problem with the Sara Palin interview was that Oprah missed what’s most exiting and scary about Palin: her present and future. The interview was focused too much on Palin’s past, which is a big part of her new book, Going Rogue. Surely the book had to be talked about, but that could have been used as a vehicle for a more challenging interview. As I write this Palin is part of a movement that’s squeezing moderates out of the Republican party. Tomorrow she might have an influential talk show somewhere. In 2012 she might become a presidential candidate. Now those are real themes.

Who really cares about the by-now-ancient presidential campaign? Only Palin does. Talking about the past (that is, reshaping it) only benefits Palin, the political figure. It gives her a chance to portray herself as a victim of the political system, the media, common sexism, and even John McCain’s campaign staff. That’s why she will never say much about having run an awful campaign, which hit it’s lowest, muddiest, and most laughable point when CBS journalist Katie Couric asked Palin what books and magazines she read and Palin couldn’t answer. Anyone who expects Palin to really admit her past political mistakes is really naive, or simply an idiot. Is the book mea culpa? Please.

Oprah let Palin use her show to revise the recent past without much of a challenge. Maybe she felt guilty for not having invited Palin during the campaign, I don’t know. In any case, here’s Palin’s astute revision of history in her own on words: “The reason we lost was because the economy tanked under a Republican administration and people really wanted a change.” In other words, apparently there was no way Republicans could have won the last presidential election even if Ronald Reagan was the candidate. Let’s say Palin is right. Let’s say she is not VP right now because there was no way people were going pick another Republican due to the economy. Let’s say her populist tirades devoid of political substance aimed at sweet talking right wing reactionaries and her amateur mistakes on national television had no impact on her campaign because it was all a matter of course.

Levi Johnston

Why, then, did Palin attack McCain’s campaign staff so much? Could it be because she is trying hard to come off unscathed from the presidential election defeat even at the expense of the very people who brought her to national prominence? Could it be that she is ungrateful to McCain and his people without whom she would still be an insular Alaskan figure?

No one, of course, expected Oprah to suddenly turn into Rachel Maddow, the liberal MSNBC anchor whose main strength is digesting piles of political minutiae. But Oprah’s experience should have told her that focusing on Palin’s personal life and the immediate political past would not work. Though as a politician Palin is certainly bombastic, as a person she isn’t that amazing. She has five kids and has gotten pretty far in a world dominated by men. So what? We knew that already. A single question about, say, health care, would have been much more illuminating. I guess I was hoping Oprah and Sarah Palin would at some point compare and contrast their values on national television so that people could see how far off to the right Palin really is.

It didn’t happen. Palin has come a long way. If she had a knack for the spotlight before, she is even better now: herself yet more guarded. In this key interview, the first one where she talked about her book, she even managed to look sensible. When asked if she would invite Levi Johnston (her grandchild’s father, who published an article in Vanity Fair viciously criticizing her whole family) for Thanksgiving dinner, Palin answered yes. “He is loved and has this beautiful child,” she said. Whether she actually invites Johnston or not for Thanksgiving dinner is another deal. What matters in this case is how good Palin managed to look in the eyes of Oprah’s huge audience.

During that famous 2008 interview Katie Couric showed America to what extent Sarah Palin is capable of looking like a fool in front of millions of people. Yet this time around, free from all campaign pressures, Palin managed to successfully sit for an hour with another difficult interviewer who is no doubt part of what Republicans wrongly call “the liberal media.” She did not appear polarizing or populist. During the entire show millions of Americans, including Oprah, watched a more polished version of an already radian and successful family woman and probably forgot her alarming views on issues like women’s rights, gay rights, the economy, immigration and, of course, health care and the war. Palin, the politician, has come a long way.