“I love to write, but not about myself,” wrote Sarah Palin on page 409 of a book that is almost entirely about herself. Going Rogue is subtitled “An American Life,” but Sarah Palin is hardly the typical American “hockey mom.”

How many women have won a local beauty contest, finished second runner-up in the state pageant, then gone on to be Mayor, Governor, and vice presidential candidate of one of the two major parties, all while giving birth to and raising five children? How many have earned the nickname “barracuda” for toughness in athletic competition and “Miss Congeniality” in the aforementioned state beauty pageant? Lord, it must be hard to pretend you’re just a typical American career mom when your book about yourself sits atop the bestseller list a week after it hit the bookstores.

No doubt about it: Sarah is special. So is her special-needs child, Trig, born with Down’s Syndrome only a few months before his mother was tapped to run for Vice President. That was child number five for Todd and Sarah Palin, with their eldest, Track, already in the military and headed for Iraq. “She’s got a baby, what is she doing?” asked one woman I know when she heard of Sen. John McCain’s choice of a running mate. But the governor of Alaska knew what she was doing then and, contrary to the speculations of some in the Washington punditocracy, she did not take leave of her senses in July of this year when she resigned as Governor of Alaska to… well, she didn’t say exactly what she was going to do.

Was it because she hadn’t made up her mind? Or was it that she wanted to get an early start in campaigning for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. Obviously, she had committed to writing a book and received a princely sum for a simple, 45-year-old hockey mom — $1.5 million, in fact — as an advance. But is the book tour an end in itself? Or is it the prelude to a campaign to be (sorry, Hillary) the first woman ever nominated for and perhaps elected to the office of President of the United States?

Unlike a couple of book tours done over the years by Newt Gingrich, the Palin parade has not yet included a stop in New Hampshire, the state with the nation’s first presidential primaries every four years.  I don’t know if it has taken her to Iowa either, but the campaign cycle is still young.

But art, including political art, is long, and time is fleeting. Sarah’s heart, though stout and brave, still like muffled drums is beating past the last election grave. The GOP was soundly beaten in ’06 and again in ’08, but there are signs of new life in the old Party, and who better than a youngish mom with battle scars to point the way to a better tomorrow, to offer a Republican version of “hope” and “change”?

But before you shell out $28.99 at your local bookstore or even a reduced price wherever you can find or order the book, be advised if you are looking for a hint or confirmation of her future plans, you won’t find it. The conventional wisdom is she is already running for the White House. That, more than sexism, may be why Newsweek chose the Runner’s World magazine shot of the glamorous Palin posing in running shorts for its cover of November 23. She is, like, running, get it? The issue that followed George Bush’s win in the Iowa caucuses in 1980 showed “Poppy” Bush out jogging. True he was wearing a sweat suit instead of shorts, but who would want to see Bush’s legs, anyway?

So it seemed a bit chippy of Palin to object to the cover on the grounds of “sexism.” She is supposed to have a tough hide, after all. But the book makes only scant mention of Palin’s reputation as “Sarahcuda,” a word she recalled seeing on a T-shirt somewhere on the campaign route. She describes her days as a student athlete, making mention of “the liberating effect Title IX on women’s sports.” It might have been refreshing if, at that juncture or later in the book, Governor Palin would have pointed out something that used to be a talking point for conservative Republicans: the role of the federal government in elementary- and secondary-school education. Simply put, there isn’t one, constitutionally speaking. But school districts, hooked on federal grant money, are required to make athletic opportunities equally available to both (all?) genders as well as students of all races, religions, and ethnic derivations. So if not enough girls come out for the high-school wrestling team, then the school jolly well better let the girls who do want to wrestle get down on the mat and wrestle with the boys. What does Sarah Palin, champion of traditional family values, think of that? Her book doesn’t tell us.

Take this, Governor Palin, and label it sexist if you wish: the book is like a woman’s bikini. What it reveals is interesting; what it conceals is essential. The politically interested reader has to ask himself: Do I know any more about Sarah Palin’s political ambitions or core beliefs at the end of the book than I did at the beginning? Aside from a few vague hints of something deeper, the answer is “no.”

The question is important because nearly every vice presidential candidate is considered among the “top tier” of candidates for the next opportunity to run for President. But running mates do not speak their own minds. They articulate — even parrot — the talking points of the presidential candidate and his handlers. So at the end of the campaign, you know as little, or even less about the VP candidate’s belief than you did at the beginning. To recall 1980 again, George Bush the Elder started out as a “pro-choice” candidate who thought Ronald Reagan’s combination of tax cuts, defense spending increases, and safety-net entitlement guarantees would yield a balanced budget only through the magic of “voodoo economics.” Then he became Reagan’s running mate, and by the time he was elected Vice President, no one knew what he stood for anymore.

But Palin has the advantage of having been on the losing team in ’08, an experience that could, if she would let it, be even more liberating than Title IX. Vice President Joe Biden is saddled with the duty of being the spokesman for the Obama administration. Sarah Palin, for the first time since she entered the national spotlight, is in a position to speak for herself. And what she says is rather muted.

She is for free enterprise, she says. And local government. Against bailouts for failing businesses. She is for small business and small government. She knows energy issues, especially in Alaska with its trillions of cubic feet of natural gas and its rich oil reserves. She knows also that the supply is non-replaceable and she knows a thing or two about energy conservation, wind and solar power and she understands the value of keeping a scenic land beautiful and preserving abundant outdoor opportunities, protecting fisheries and standing up to big oil companies. On all of that, she can appeal common sense conservatives and to moderates and even liberals among Republican, Democrat and independent voters.

But hardcore conservatives may wonder if she is really “one of us.” Yes, she sings hosannas to the sainted Ronald Reagan and to Margaret Thatcher as well, but does she still believe in the pre-W conservative agenda and Republican platforms that called for the elimination of the federal departments of Energy and Education? She sued the federal Environmental Protection Agency for putting polar bears on the Endangered Species list, an act of rebellion that might endear her to the Party’s conservative base. But curiously, she makes no mention of that in her 413-page book. She shies away from endorsing “abstinence only” sex education and says she supports contraception, though she is strong in her stand against abortion. But that might make you wonder if she is aware that most forms of artificial contraception are really abortifacients and if she can look the culture of death in the face and recognize it for the evil that it is.

On military and foreign policy matters, she seems to think we need to “stay the course” in Afghanistan and Iraq. Our diplomacy, she says, must make it clear that we support freedom for all and, of course, we must be constant in our support of Israel.

On pork barrel spending, she is against Senator Clinton’s proposal to build a memorial to the Woodstock celebration in New York and a proposed monument to mules and other pack animals in California and the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere” in Alaska. Pause over that last one before it goes by in a blur. That’s all the mention that it gets. She spends several pages recalling her grilling at the hands of CBS News anchor Katie Couric, which did not turn out well, but recalls only one insignificant detail of her interview with ABC’s Charles Gibson. Gibson kept looking over his bifocals like a professor giving an oral exam to a college student.

But in fact, Palin flunked that exam. Worse, she flunked on the issue of honesty. In an interview with Palin, Gibson zeroed in on her statement, made at the Republican National Convention and elsewhere, that  "I told Congress, 'Thanks, but no thanks, on that Bridge to Nowhere.' If our state wanted to build a bridge, we were going to build it ourselves." In fact, Gibson pointed out, she was lobbying for federal funding for the bridge before she was against it and was against it only after it had become a political embarrassment. Well, every Governor lobbies for projects for her state, Palin countered in a desperate, artless dodge. But Gibson, to his credit, focused in on the duplicity of pretending to have been against it all along. Sometimes those doggone network news people, for all their liberal biases, get it right.

Palin was ground down by all the scripted answers, the talking points, all the orders from campaign “headquarters” to say nothing and only to the right people. Headquarters was risk aversive and continually opposed to her “going rogue.”  Talk in platitudes, give scripted non-answers, play it safe, and don’t forget to remind people you’re a “maverick,” just like John McCain. “And also, too, the great Ronald Reagan,” as Tina Fey so often said in her Saturday Night Live parodies of Palin. 

That has essentially been the Republican strategy for the last 70-plus years, perhaps because it worked so well for Tom Dewey. And, to be fair, it did work for Nixon, for the Bushes and “also, too, the great Ronald Reagan.”  It is the Republican Party’s equivalent of the NFL’s “prevent defense.” If you employ that strategy when you have a big lead, there is a chance you might not blow all of it.

Palin got “mavericky” — she went rogue — when she dissed the New York liberal the Party bosses chose to run for Congress in the state’s District 23 in this fall’s special election and endorsed the Conservative Party candidate instead. Newt Gingrich, by contrast, played the male version of Tammy Wynette, saying stand by your left-wing, same-sex marriage, cap-and-trade, pro-abort if she wears the Republican label. The Democrat won that race but the so-called pragmatists were still wrong in saying you can advance the conservative agenda by electing liberal Republicans.

Palin needs to do still more to break away from the Party establishment and show her own “true grit.” She could stop listening to the foreign policy “experts” on the Council on Foreign Relations and start reading Pat Buchanan’s books on how America is following in the failed footsteps of past empires. She could stop exulting about how we are “spreading democracy” and “building schools” in Afghanistan and reflect on why civilians who see their loved ones killed by unmanned bombers in Afghanistan and Pakistan may not see America as the “shining city on a hill.” She could recall what Ron Paul said about bridges and how we have been taxing the American people to bomb bridges in Iraq and then taxing (or borrowing) some more to rebuild those bridges. Meanwhile our bridges here are falling apart. She might recall Paul’s admonition that America should try leading  “by the force of example, instead of the example of force.”

Okay, that’s trite, too. But it has the advantage of being true. And it doesn’t take 413 pages to say it.
 
 

 

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Don Pedro said:

	... I just hope she goes away already. She may be interest to watch but she'd be disastrous for this country as a leader.
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December 01, 2009
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R Sessler said:

Huh! ? I pray to God that she runs for President. It will be a sure win for the Dems. On-informed people who know nothing about her (lack of) political positions run after her bus hoping for a chance to see her. Opps Sorry, she's not on the bus. But rather, she flew from bookstore to bookstore in her private jet. But then again, if she runs and wins... she will likely quit mid-term, as she did as Governor... so she can what? Write another book. Palin is a sad commentary on what happens when you watch FOX and all its' propaganda.

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December 01, 2009
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R Sessler said:

	That should be ILL-informed people. ...................
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December 01, 2009
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Rosco1776 said:

	ZZZzzzzz....... Maybe she'll quit the race before it starts, let's hope so. If she is the best the republicans can come up with then they are in trouble. I voted Ron Paul in the primaries but neither of the main stream media darlings in the election. The USS America is sinking, too bad the rats aren't jumping ship soon enough! We need a complete revamping of the ranks!
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December 01, 2009 | url
Votes: +1

Lee Gonzales said:

The Palin bandwagon Jack Jenny didn't find much of worth in "Going Rogue," but then again Jack is a gold miner and knows the difference between real gold and "fool's gold." Marlyn Monroe made a lot of money but that didn't translate to being genuinely smart. She crossed a lot of bridges to nowhere too but it didn't cost taxpayers a dime. She was the "dumb blonde" who hung out with rich politicians from Massachusetts who filled their administration with CFR types. I doubt she knew what a CFR type was. Sarah Palin doesn't mention the CFR in her vogue rogue book; as a matter of fact according to Mr.Kenny's review, doesn't mention much of anything. People who lined up here in New Mexico in the cold to buy her book must have had at least one question in their mind concerning why American is in deep trouble and at least could have cued her in on it for the brief 10 seconds they were before her "rogue-ish" majesty. #1: "Your royal 'Queen of the rogue', why not advocate abolishing the Department of Energy?" #2 "Your 'Highness of the Rogue Moose' when are you going to point your moose gun at the Endangered Species Act?" #3: "Your 'Duchess of Permafrost,' when will you point your snowmobile entourage in the direction of CFR headquarters and call them the traiitors that they are?" #4: "Your 'Most Rogue-ishness of Northern Lights," When are you going to enlighten your admiring public about the craziness of turning over our personal health insurance policy to a government that is in the killing business?" #5: "Hey, you phony broad,can you spell Constitution?"

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December 02, 2009
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BoMeister said:

	Jack, you're envious Sounds like penis envy, Jack. She's hot, smart and mowing down the Left....get used to it. BHO is a one termer and Sarah is on the rise....1 Mill books sold last week and total 2.5 Mill in print. Yeah, even with a full cheering section by the drive-by state run media, the libs can's amass sales like that!
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December 02, 2009
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Paul Burke - Journey Home said:

Thoughts on Sarah Palin and the United States of America Sarah strikes me as an empty headed prop who won a popularity contest at a small high school gymnasium by intimidating the other girls and romancing the administration. It looks like she bites the hand that feeds her as she turned on McCain the first chance she got - which was immediately. That's the kind of class and dignity we are looking for in a President (?) - Sorry Palin worshipers she may be a sociopath.

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December 02, 2009 | url
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Paul Burke - Journey Home said:

Thoughts on Sarah Palin and the United States of America The President of the United States is a very serious job. Our spin doctors and campaign managers have turned it into a high school popularity contest, but in reality the stakes are much higher. You can not govern by slogan. Look at the damage done by deregulating Wall Street. That move was promoted and championed because of two words "free market". Nice concept but in the intricate world of market economies a complete fallacy. You can not govern by cute little slogans. "Trickle Down" has lead to the unconscionable concentration of wealth in 1% of the population through subsidies and give aways of our tax dollars to the corporate insiders who place their people in our government. Granted its a costly game of brinkmanship, sloganeering and manipulation to get the population to vote one way or the other, but at the end of the day to the extent we relinquish control and fall prey to easy answers big corporate america runs the show. And corporatist and corporate america are unqualified to govern the country because their focus is too singular on their particular profit margins. Great focus for a successful business but absolutely wrong and a severe lack of vision for guiding this huge country over the realities of our collective landscape.

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December 02, 2009 | url
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Paul Burke - Journey Home said:

Thoughts on Sarah Palin and the United States of America The fruit of their electioneering of politics has created an us against them mentality among the citizens in our Country. And it has created an artificial out of touch ruling class that cares only for the acquisition of personal wealth. The reality is that we are all in this together. And if we don't make room for one another there will be trouble no matter how right one group thinks they are over another. That is hardly the Country we all want or aspire to and not the vision of the United States we all desire to see unfold. In short we are better than that. While Sarah might be a fascinating soap opera of a character, fun to loath or root for she is only qualified for a People Magazine Cover in the same respect of a Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan - what will she do/say next escapade. All of these new media celebrities are the same version of the same m.o. - say or do something shocking to get the world of rubber neckers gawking just like the well worn metaphor of a car wreck. Whether Glenn Beck is crying or predicting something ludicrous or Rush is flame throwing and lambasting something even he doesn't believe, or some new media celeb is releasing a sex tape - its all shock value in the mode and method Howard Stern used to get famous and rich. That may be one way to achieve a personal goal of wealth and fame but that personality trait is absolutely the worst trait to reward in our politicians.

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December 02, 2009 | url
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Paul Burke - Journey Home said:

Thoughts on Sarah Palin and the United States of America Good governance requires good citizenship an understanding of how our Country works as a Nation of laws, the intricacies of the market place and in getting along with other people who may not share your same views, culture, beliefs and habits. It requires a true patriotism not in name alone but a commitment to actually put the Country and the people first over individual gain, profit and popularity. Forcing ones self and opinion down another's throat doesn't win you many friends. No matter how right you think you are its counter productive and tone deaf. Creating a nation and world where we are "free to be" as long as we don't hurt each other and live sustainably side by side is the goal. Jumping up and down screaming my way or the highway leads to bloodshed. I would put forth that if you aren't living by these two rules of thumb "live and let live" and "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" - it is you no matter what bible you are carrying or what uniform you are wearing that is doing the wrong thing. That's Pollyanna thinking for the Alpha Dogs like Palin but in actuality the alpha dogs are the ones who are clueless when it comes to anything other than their own selfish- self interest. That kind of self absorbed me first focus might be good for ones bottom line but it's one helluva lousy way to "govern" a Country. North Korea goes rogue not the President of the United States. Paul Burke Author-Journey Home Public Campaign Action Fund http://www.campaignmoney.org/

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December 02, 2009 | url
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