Sarah Palin has absolutely no national security experience, and in an interview with ABC’s Charles Gibson, she pretty much did everything she could to tiptoe around that fact.

GIBSON: But this is not just reforming a government. This is also running a government on the huge international stage in a very dangerous world. When I asked John McCain about your national security credentials, he cited the fact that you have commanded the Alaskan National Guard and that Alaska is close to Russia. Are those sufficient credentials?

PALIN: But it is about reform of government and it’s about putting government back on the side of the people, and that has much to do with foreign policy and national security issues Let me speak specifically about a credential that I do bring to this table, Charlie, and that’s with the energy independence that I’ve been working on for these years as the governor of this state that produces nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy, that I worked on as chairman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, overseeing the oil and gas development in our state to produce more for the United States. GIBSON: I know. I’m just saying that national security is a whole lot more than energy.

I don’t know what is stranger about this transcript: the fact that Charles Gibson asked a hard-hitting question, or the fact that Sarah Palin thinks energy experience is the same thing as national security experience. It seems more likely that she was just trying to steer away from the issue of national security, because she recognizes that she knows nothing about it. The fact is, energy experience is perhaps the only credential that Palin brings to the ticket that John McCain could not already claim for himself. While Barack Obama added experience and a strong presense to his ticket by picking Joe Biden, John McCain opted to just pick a pretty face with little political experience to speak of.