After drifting away from the spotlight for the past few months, the former small town-bred Alaska Governor who ran for VP is making her way back into the headlines. Love her or hate her – where she goes from here is a matter of relevance. From taking time off following her resignation to writing her memoir and attacking Newsweek’s supposedly sexist portrayal of her on the front cover, its increasingly hard to predict where she will go from here. If she plays her cards right she will maintain her sphere of influence in the political arena for years to come and still possess the option of returning to elected office. While she discussed many of her past issues with McCain staffers and Katie Couric in her interview with Oprah, the future of her career was left open-ended and she sounded like she could see herself as anywhere between a pundit and a future presidential candidate.
For a while people were asking themselves “does she want to continue?” As soon as she got a piece of the national spotlight, both her and her family were viciously torn apart by the elitists and the attack dogs in the mainstream media. The Katie Couric interview was particularly devastating for her image. The sudden change in her life would have made a lot of folks decide that they had had enough. Her resignation as Governor of Alaska after the campaign might have been perceived as a retreat from the national arena, but she supposedly talks about that in her upcoming book. But if she did end up giving up, a lot of her fans out there would be disappointed.
Not that you’ll find many of those fans where I live. Boston is uptight, self-righteous Palin-hater country. While her book has sold quite a few copies before even being released, I doubt that it will be a best-seller around here. Her book is titled Going Rogue: An American Life. I obviously have not read the book so I cannot make haste generalizations about the content. I do know she’s been somewhat of a maverick since getting involved in politics. She is a member of the Republican Party, but has frequently clashed with the Republican establishment. She has an outsider tendency that sort of reminds me of Texas Congressman Ron Paul. That may explain her feud with former staffers of the McCain campaign. McCain, who has had a long career of being a maverick, made the mistake of campaigning with too much of Bush’s message rather than coming out truly in favor of limiting the role of government in people’s lives. Some Hollywood celebrities have also made comments about her upcoming book, but really what do they know. I only hope that following the release of this book we’ll all get a more enlightened and informed image of the real Sarah Palin.
I’ve never been a big Palin fan. She struck me as being somewhat empty. That being said, I also believe that the left saw her as a big threat. She’s dynamic, she has that “outsider” quality that you speak of, and people gravitated to her. Hence, the attacks and the “Palin derangement syndrome,” and the unprecedented effort to smear her.
Personally, I’d like her to run for the house or Senate. If she is able to maintain that “outsider, Maverick, Rogue” thing going in that venue, she is the real deal. Either way, time will tell.
I have not read the book, but I did see a piece about her on the news that was eye-opening. McCain’s people said that Palin refused to take notes on policies in meetings and they were trying to prep her—help her, if you will. It was after that she failed in the Couric interview. Going rogue is good to a point, but you need to give the masters their due and learn from their knowledge and experience. I predict she will get no higher than talk show host on the order of Maury or Springer.