Jen, Sarah Palin’s latest Katie Couric interview shows more than promise, I think. It’s an impressive display of an informed and nuanced mind: She wouldn’t personally counsel a rape or incest victim to get an abortion, but by no means should any woman be put in jail for doing so. She believes evolution should be taught in school as a proven scientific principle, but she personally sees the hand of God in the creation of the universe. This interview proves that she should have been out there acting as her own myth-buster this whole time. And she should have struck while the iron was hot.

If you compare this Couric interview with her earlier disastrous one, the question arises: Is Sarah Palin simply a foreign policy know-nothing? How else can you explain the night-and-day difference? In terms of your suggestion about getting specific: she does — when it’s an area in which she has a command of the facts: energy, reproductive rights, etc. But if she doesn’t have the specifics on Hamas, the Pakistani ISI, al Qaeda, or the Taliban, she’s sunk. And if she is truly unable to enumerate the difficulties that face American troops in Afghanistan or expand on the challenges of Arab democracy then it will come out in the wash tomorrow night.