Campaign's Over, Palin's Still Talking

Nov. 11, 2008 — -- It is almost as if she's been set free.

For a candidate who was so closely guarded from the press during the campaign, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is talking up a storm now.

Since Election Day, Palin has spoken to reporters eight times.

"I don't mind at all doing interviews," she told reporters.

The governor's home in Wasilla, Alaska, has been a flurry of media activity in the last few days as reporters and producers from Fox News, the Anchorage Daily News and NBC have crowded into the Palin family kitchen, where the governor has whipped up specialties like moose stew, moose dogs with cheese and halibut-salmon casserole.

Palin effortlessly mixed and stirred while talking politics.

In fact, she told Fox News' Greta van Susteren that she wishes her handlers would have let her do more interviews up front.

"I would have preferred more opportunity to speak to the media more often, because there were a lot of things that I think it could have, should have said that could have, would have helped John McCain," Palin said in the interview that aired Monday night.

One of the things Palin wishes that she had spoken up about sooner was the Internet rumor that she was not the mother of baby Trig and that perhaps Trig was her 17-year-old daughter Bristol's child.

"It started off with the rumors or speculation even in mainstream media that Trig wasn't actually my child, that Trig was somebody else's child and I faked a pregnancy," she told NBC's Matt Lauer on the "Today" show. "That was absolutely ridiculous and it took days for that false allegation to ever be corrected."

She also scoffed at rumors that Bristol, who is currently pregnant, was under political pressure to marry her 18-year-old boyfriend.

Palin, who will be a featured speaker Wednesday at the Republican governor's association annual meeting, also told Lauer she was initially surprised that the Obama-Biden ticket won by the margin it did last week, but she rejects the criticism that she was a drag on Arizona Sen. John McCain.

"I thought it would be closer," Palin said on NBC. "But then, taking a step back and being able to consider why it was that the margin was as great as it was, it makes sense. We didn't get the Hispanic vote, and that was very significant. And when you consider that we were outspent so tremendously, it makes sense there, also, that perhaps the margin was going to be larger than we anticipated."