I’ve always thought that PBS’s Gwen Ifill was a genuinely smart anchor — much more so than you find on the other broadcast networks — and, as liberal media people go, she was reasonably fair. But the news that she has a book coming out on this coming inauguration day, titled “Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama” just blows her out of the water when it comes to even the appearance of impartiality. Simply put: if Obama wins the election, her book will be poised to ride the wave of fascination with the new president and will likely do very very well indeed. If Obama loses, it may well be in remainder bins before Valentine’s Day.

So, she has a very real and enormous personal financial stake in Barack Obama and Joe Biden winning this election. It’s as if Hugh Hewitt moderated a debate between Mitt Romney, McCain and Huckabee (Hewitt wrote a book called “A Mormon in the White House” early on in the election cycle).

Still: how does this really play for Sarah Palin? If Ifill should be replaced, it will be with another liberal media figure — quite likely a worse one, because most are. If Gwen Ifill remains as moderator, any post-debate spin can include the fact that she did have a personal financial stake in how the debate turned out. Perhaps that’s a desirable arrow to keep in the quiver.

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