Good Friday morning. When your football team, ranked somewhere around 70th in the country, faces the Oklahoma Sooners, who have scored four times as many points as they've allowed, what, exactly, do you look forward to on a Saturday? Here's what Washington is watching today:

-- The Senate is back for consideration of the defense authorization bill, a measure actually keeping them in session on a Friday. The House took off yesterday after pushing a debate on energy legislation to next week. President Bush is in Oklahoma City today for a roundtable on health care before fundraising for John McCain, while EPA administrator Steve Johnson unveils his agency's new hydrogen fuel cell car and U.S. Trade Representative Susan Schwab test drives an electric car in Santa Clara.

-- After a brief pause from politics, all eyes are back on Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, who gave her first major interviews to ABC's Charlie Gibson this week. The interviews will air tonight as part of a special prime time feature, which says something in itself about her popularity, and at least some parts are set to be just as explosive, in many minds, as her initial selection. In her native Alaska to see her son off to Iraq, Palin showed off part of her state while sitting for what the campaign promises will be the first of many meetings with reporters.

-- Subsequent interviewers are going to want to follow up on her beliefs regarding her own experience, foreign policy, the Bush doctrine and a dozen other issues on which the ABC host barely scratched the surface, according to excerpts provided by the network. Palin passed most tests, disclosing that she spoke with Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili, correctly pronouncing Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's name and suggesting she favors an ambitious expansion of NATO eastward into the Caucus Mountains.

-- Want to know what issues John McCain plans to make this election about? How about the war on Iraq and drilling for oil? In perhaps the most telling moment in excerpts provided by ABC, Palin says she doesn't agree with her running mate's position on drilling in Alaska (He's against it, she's for it) and casts the larger energy debate in stark terms. "I want you to not lose sight of the fact that energy is a foundation of national security. It's that important. It's that significant," she said.

-- But there were less than perfect moments as well, her first momentary gaffes on the trail. Palin didn't quite seem to know what the Bush doctrine is, only barely defended her own experience -- or lack thereof -- and, in her speech wishing troops well in Iraq, seemed to suggest the war in Iraq included fights against those who carried out the September 11 attacks. Troops, she said, will "defend the innocent from the enemies who planned and carried out and rejoiced in the death of thousands of Americans," writes Anne Kornblut of the Washington Post.

-- Both McCain and Barack Obama spent September 11 remembering the anniversary, with McCain spending time in Shanksville, Pennsylvania and both candidates meeting at Ground Zero in New York. Later, McCain and Obama split time on a stage at Columbia University, where they spoke of their plans to promote national service on a day that is becoming a new reason for Americans to do something outside themselves. The forum was largely civil, Fox News writes, but today it's back to the campaign trail and the long knives.

-- McCain may want to make the race solely about energy development, but both candidates are going to have to seriously debate the flagging economy that will face the next chief executive, the Wall Street Journal's Izzo and Evans write today. A survey of top economists suggests most fear a pending recession, with rising job losses continuing for the next year. Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested four issues the election should be about at her weekly press conference yesterday -- "Jobs, jobs, jobs jobs" -- and both candidates will be forced to turn that way for the stretch run.

-- Anger Of The Day: Lipstick, attack ads or other minor issues, the media is getting mad, writes the Post's Howard Kurtz. Think certain blue collar voters cling to things when times are bad? The media clings to every memory (See: The preceding reference) and slight, and it will be sooner rather than later that news outlets start lashing out. They have already, Kurtz writes, begun seriously challenging any misstatement from campaigns in a more aggressive way than in previous years. Hey, we don't know anything about anger; we're downright serene.

-- Today On The Trail: Obama starts his day addressing the Machinists' union via satellite before heading to New Hampshire for a few stops. He will talk tax relief in Dover and rally in Manchester. McCain and wife Cindy are doing the television rounds today, hitting Rachael Ray at 10 a.m. Eastern and The View on ABC. Palin and Joe Biden have no public events planned, but Jill Biden will hold events with teachers in Mason City, with supporters in Iowa Falls, with veterans in Marshalltown and with the community at large in Waterloo, Iowa (Just noting, she's holding more public events in one day than McCain or Obama has for months).