Sarah Palin promises to focus on energy independence if she becomes vice president, a mission she claims to be uniquely qualified for as governor of an oil and gas-producing state. "We must get there," the GOP nominee said September 18 on Fox News. "It is a matter of national security and our future prosperity."

But earlier this year, Palin missed an opportunity to help the US mainland obtain billions of cubic feet of natural gas from Alaska's Cook Inlet. Her support of an effort by major energy producers to export the fuel to more lucrative markets in Asia came just as a facility that will provide the first practical way to bring the state's natural gas to the lower 48 states was set to open on the Baja coast in Mexico.