Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., right, and his vice presidential running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, address the crowd at a campaign rally Tuesday at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa.

Lebanon, Ohio ? John McCain took a risk in picking little-known Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as a running mate, but now the campaign’s playing it safer. She’s sticking to a greatest hits version of her convention speech on the campaign trail and steering clear of questions until she’s comfortable enough for a hand-picked interviewer later this week.

More than 40 million people tuned in last week to listen to the speech from Palin, the 44-year-old first-term governor whom McCain announced as his surprise vice presidential pick just days before. Since then, that basic script is all anyone has heard from her publicly, and her only interaction with the media was a brief conversation with a small group of reporters on her plane Monday – off the record at her handlers’ insistence.

Associated Press reporters were not on the plane, but an aide told the journalists on board that all Palin flights would be off the record unless the media were told otherwise. At least one reporter objected. Two people on the flight said the Palins greeted the media and they chatted about who had been to Alaska, but little else was said.

By comparison, her Democratic counterpart, Joe Biden, has been campaigning on his own for weeks, at times taking questions from audiences. He was interviewed on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday.

His campaign appearances have touched on a range of issues – in Florida he talked about U.S. support for Israel, in Pennsylvania it was economics and tax policy.

Amid growing sniping from Democrats, the McCain campaign announced that Palin would sit down for her first interview, with ABC. It will take place over two days at her home in Alaska.

And then?

McCain campaign manager Rick Davis has said that Palin will “agree to an interview when we think it’s time and when she feels comfortable doing it.”

“She’s not scared to answer questions,” Davis said on “Fox News Sunday.”

So far, Palin has barely spoken with voters either. Since the convention, she and McCain have breezed through a Wisconsin ice cream shop, a New Mexico restaurant and a Missouri barbecue place, shaking hands with diners but not taking any questions. Photographers and television cameras have been allowed full view while reporters are typically ushered too far away to ask questions or hear most of the conversations.

Her public remarks essentially have been excerpts of her convention speech, delivered while introducing McCain at rallies.

Her schedule released Tuesday shows she will attend a “welcome home” rally in Fairbanks, Alaska, tonight – her first major campaign appearance without McCain at her side and his advisers hanging in the wings.

To be sure, all candidates running for office give the same remarks over and over – Barack Obama’s stump speech has hardly changed throughout the campaign, and McCain has been telling familiar stories and jokes for months.

But none of the candidates in this race has been so shielded from the media, so protected from any spontaneous situation, and Palin’s unvarying remarks give the impression that she and her message are being tightly controlled. As before her convention speech, McCain’s campaign is briefing Palin for her first TV interview.

In her remarks, there are always descriptions of McCain as a “man who’s there to serve his country and not just his party.” He’s someone who’s “not looking for a fight but is not afraid of one either.” He “doesn’t run with the Washington herd.” He’s the only man in this election “who has ever really fought for you.”

And always the same details about herself, how she “stood up to the special interests, the lobbyists, big oil companies and the good ol’ boys network,” as a mayor and then governor in Alaska.

The people in their crowds, many of whom say they’ve heard these lines before, still go wild when she repeats that McCain put everything on the line last year when he said “he would rather lose an election than see his country lose a war.”