By: Mike Allen

Gwen Ifill, moderator of the vice presidential debate, said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that she has not yet written the chapter about Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) in her controversial upcoming book on his effect on politics.

Her book, “The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama,” is to be published on Inauguration Day.

Ifill, moderator and managing editor of “Washington Week” and senior correspondent of “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer,” pushed back at critics’ description of the book as pro-Obama.

“It didn’t take much to figure out what the book was really about,” Ifill said. “It didn’t take but a couple mouse clicks to discover that what they were saying about the book wasn’t true and that, in fact, I wasn’t writing the book they said. …

“I hadn’t even written the Obama chapter yet, because I don’t know how it ends. My editors are thinking: ‘Really? Have you written it? We’d like to see it.’ So they used that.”

Ifill, who was quite equitable in running the debate, suggested the story about her book was pushed by Palin allies: “It was also interesting to realize that if changing the subject from the stakes of the vice-presidential debate, then talking about the moderator, instead of talking about the candidate, they would do that.”

Tom Brokaw, moderating “Meet the Press,” said: “What you did was keep your head high and not respond.”
Ifill replied with a laugh: “I kind of kept my head low, actually.”

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