Sarah Palin will be missing from action Sunday a.m.

As is The Ticket's custom, a post listing the entire roster of
appearances on this Sunday's interview programs will pop up Saturday at
noon PDT (3 p.m. EDT).

But here's an advance heads up, in part because of who WON'T be found on
any of the chat shows.

Three of the four now-official candidates on the major-party
presidential tickets are scheduled to sit down for questions: Democrat
Barack Obama on ABC's "This Week," his running mate, Joe Biden, on NBC's
"Meet the Press" and Republican John McCain on CBS' "Face the Nation."

Absent from this list, of course, is the GOP's star of the moment, the
not-so-long-ago obscure governor of Alaska who is McCain's running mate,
Sarah Palin.

Since she was thrust onto the national stage a week ago, her appearances
on it have been tightly regulated by the McCain campaign: a few
side-by-side campaign stops with him and, of course, her big speech to
the GOP's convention Wednesday night.

Today, top McCain aide Rick Davis indicated the campaign isn't in any
hurry to slot Palin for a Sunday show appearance -- and will do so only
if he and other strategists determine it serves the ticket's purposes,
not because some may view it as a required initiation for a major
political player.

Appearing on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" show, Davis said, "I'd never commit
to anything in the future. ... Our strategy is in our hands, not the
media's. We're going to do what's in our best interests to try to win
the election. If we think going on TV news shows are [sic] in our best
interests, we'll do it. If we don't, we won't."


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Translation: She'd be eaten alive if she were forced to face serious
reporters with serious questions.