Judging from the pre-debate hysteria and whining of Republicans, you'd have thought Ifill posed an actual physical threat to the schoolmarmish Republican vice presidential candidate.

Why? Simply because Ifill is working on a book that centers on Barack Obama but that, as her critics never point out, features other black politicians.

Anyone who knew Ifill, who was familiar with her long journalism career, knew she would accord both candidates the professional deference and respect their positions deserved. She wasn't going to be bothered by the pre-emptive sniping of those who questioned her integrity.

She might not've been bothered by it, but I was.

When "Boy" George Stephanopoulos moderated the Democratic presidential debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, there were few, if any, lamentations that his participation was a conflict of interest or that his ties to the Clintons made him anything less than a paragon of objectivity.

Stephanopoulos, after all, made his bones as an operative for candidate Bill Clinton and as communications director for President Clinton. He parlayed that contact into a lucrative job hosting ABC's "This Week" talking heads show.

Of course, after George had ridden the Clinton train as far as it would take him and his benefactors' fortunes turned for the worse following the Lewinski scandal, he turned on them with an alacrity that would've made Machiavelli proud.

Perhaps that is why Obama's representatives and the conservative pundits weren't up in arms the way the latter group became when Ifill, who'd earlier been picked to moderate Thursday night's debate, turned out to have the book plan in hand. Ifill, a journalist's journalist whom I've known or known of since she was a reporter for The Washington Post and then The New York Times, was portrayed as "in the tank" -- an actual headline of one conservative organ masquerading as an objective newspaper -- for Barack Obama because of her book on Obama and other post-civil rights-era black politicians such as Cory Booker, the charismatic Newark, N.J., mayor, and Deval Patrick, the governor of Massachusetts.

Did Palin's supporters fear that Ifill was going to put a mojo on their candidate, or use some Jedi mind trick to befuddle her on seemingly innocuous questions such as "What do you read?"

Oh, that's right: Katie Couric did that.

It's hard to imagine any objective viewer of the debate concluding that Ifill was anything less than respectful of Palin. I thought at times she was too deferential, allowing Palin to avoid answering questions she didn't want to answer -- most notably about civil rights for gays. By jove, girlfriend had her talking points -- mainly on energy -- and she was going to stick to 'em.

There was, of course, only so much Ifill could have done that wouldn't have played into the hands of those who expected her to -- nay, hoped that she would -- scold Palin, thereby betraying a pro-Biden bias.

She never did. Palin and Biden both handled themselves well, and their supporters should be proud of them.

So should Ifill's.

I do wish at some point in the debate that she had told Palin to "stop that winking." But maybe Palin was trying to perform her own Jedi mind trick -- on the minds of voters.

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