Palin doesn't rule out 2012 presidential bid

ByABC News
November 11, 2008, 2:01 PM

McLEAN, Va. -- Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, mounting a public relations blitz after her ticket's loss in the 2008 presidential election, described the campaign experience as "brutal" and strongly denied reports that she was a greedy clothes shopper and was ignorant of basic world geography.

She didn't rule out another run for a top office in four or eight years.

Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee, opened up about her sudden rise to national prominence from relative obscurity in interviews with Matt Lauer of NBC's Today and Greta Van Susteren of Fox News.

She will appear this week at the Republic Governors Association conference in Miami, where she will speak and hold a news conference.

In the interviews, Palin pushed back strongly against reports, particularly those carried by Newsweek and Fox News, that quoted top McCain advisers as saying she did not know during her debate briefings that Africa was a continent, not a country and did not know the countries involved in the North American Free Trade Agreement.

She also rejected charges that she went on a $150,000 shopping spree paid for by the Republican National Committee.

Some highlights:

Palin denied she was a drag on the ticket, blaming the country's economic conditions instead.

She said that she did not keep any of the clothes bought by the RNC and that two-thirds of them were sent back or never opened.

She said she did not unilaterally try to give a speech on concession night, saying the remarks she had hoped to deliver were drawn up by campaign speechwriters.

"I didn't know that it would be as brutal a ride as it turned out to be," she told Lauer in an interview at her home in Wasilla, Alaska.

She said she didn't understand why anyone in the McCain campaign would want to criticize her so sharply.

"I don't know that inside baseball stuff at that top echelons of why a campaign was run, it doesn't make any sense it harms everybody to have false allegations like that," she told Van Susteren.