I was chatting with a Liberal friend of mine on Facebook last night, and we began discussing Sarah Palin. When discussing Gov. Palin with Liberals, I have two basic approaches: I will be protective in the sense that I will counter the inevitable avalanche of misinformation provided with what is documented and provable, and then I will mock Pres. Obama once the conversation turns heated.
An excellent question was offered by my friend, the gist being: ‘I don’t want to buy her book because I don’t like her, but I do want to be open-minded. Is there anything I could read in 15 minutes that might change my attitude?’ My response took fewer than five seconds, because it’s what I tell anyone, whether they have a copy of the book or not: read pages 356-363 (the entirety of the fourth section of Chapter 5 (Chapter 5.4), “The Thumpin’”).
If this doesn’t change a person’s attitude and/or receptiveness to the idea that Gov. Palin is not the Devil Incarnate/Village Idiot they’ve fostered since she was named as John McCain’s running-mate, nothing she says in the rest of the Going Rogue will.
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Like everything else in American political discourse over the last 16 months regarding Gov. Palin, her memoir was held to a different standard than, well, any personal-political memoir written in recorded history. So far as I know, most political memoirs aren’t fact-checked once they’re published – if there are egregious inaccuracies, they’re covered in reviews (or libel suits), but for the most part, they’re accepted with yawning indifference.
The fanaticism of her critics spanned extremes: while the AP dedicated 11 of its employees to fact-check Going Rogue, the reviewer for The Washington Post didn’t bother to read the complete text before reviewing it, arguing/alleging that if Gov. Palin didn’t write it, why should she (the reviewer) have to read the whole thing?
No matter how successful Going Rogue is, her critics fall back on the canard that she didn’t actually write the book, as she employed the services of what some call a ghost writer. Lynn Vincent is recognized in the Acknowledgements for “her indispensable help in getting the words on paper,” something I take to mean that she helped Gov. Palin organize the overall narrative. Having heard or read most of her speeches since being tapped for Veep by John McCain, and having read all of her Facebook entries and opinions pieces, there is zero gap in voice. Like most people who aren’t novelists, Gov. Palin writes much like she speaks. For example, when I read the essays of Christopher Hitchens or Camille Paglia, I have no problem connecting the words on the page with the person who is writing them – there is nothing that is forced, and their well-known personalities shine through in their writing.
The same standard applies for Gov. Palin.
The power of humanization, what I clumsily call “sympathy-without-pity,” is stronger than most people understand, especially coming from a well-known memoirist. Any reader who is willing to spend the money and then the time to read a well-known person’s words wants to bond with them. My desire to connect with powerful people I do not like is never stronger than when I read their memoirs – this is their chance to make the wrong things right, or at least lend the context necessary to make them human.
I already liked Sarah Palin, and nothing in Going Rogue changed that. Channeling an infamous NFL coach’s post-game diatribe, she was who I thought she was.
In Chapter 5.4, Gov. Palin goes a long way to humanize herself to people not inclined to like her by doing what attracted the rest of us to her in the first place: in plain language, she fuses national issues that are so out of reach to most of the public they’re almost theoretical (don’t we wish) with how these issues are affecting and will affect everyday Americans. Gov. Palin’s lethal weapon is that she’s not considered elite, even though she possesses a killer instinct politically. If Going Rogue needed an abstract, Chapter 5.4 serves that purpose.
It was, to me, the most authentic “confession” of Gov. Palin, weaving her many roles – wife, mother, politician, Alaskan, American etc – into a narrative that involves a commute through Anchorage with her daughter Bristol. In eight pages, she manages to touch on everything from the familial concerns of the mother of a teenager (herself a young mother) to The Obama Administration’s domestic economic policies.
“We’ve all got megaphones, they just come in different sizes and styles. The one I was handed during the campaign gave me a platform to speak from regarding the path our nation is taking.”
With this, Gov. Palin begins Chapter 5.4, and she intertwines her concern about the $787 billion stimulus package; Bristol’s desire to open a coffee shop with her cousin; Gov. Palin’s own belief that “government should get out of private enterprise as much as possible…;” Bristol’s belief in private ownership; the Governor’s understanding of why certain Federal projects are necessary in the states; her desire, during the campaign, to bring up Pres. Obama’s dubious personal connections; and her reasoning behind not wanting to accept many of the stimulus funds being offered her state of Alaska.
With pithiness, Gov. Palin demonstrates why she is so popular among single men like me, the most libertarian-minded demographic in the country, while at the same time being so attractive to Conservative and Independent men and women who are rightly concerned about their children’s futures. I assume it’s the Alaskan in her, but bluntly, she gets that most of us in flyover country want the government to get the hell out of our lives.
The question repeatedly dangled in front of Palin supporters is simple: “Is she ready?”
From a personal standpoint, as someone who follows politics and the NFL with equal vigor, I answer yes. Yet, that is not enough – it’s a flippant answer, certainly not a satisfying one and understandably not taken in seriousness. The oppositional answer is equally without satisfaction: Pres. Obama has an impeccable curriculum vitae (well, we don’t know his grades, but even assuming he was a solid 3.0 student, which I do not, his CV is impressive), organized communities, was a Senator at the State and Federal level, and yet … he’s a terrible POTUS, by both Liberal and Conservative standards.
Neither answer is satisfactory as both indulge in our personal and political prejudices.
In Chapter 5.4 of
Going Rogue, Gov. Palin marries the personal with the political – she has no need to expectorate a book of wooden policy, nor does she feel the need to ignore the role her family has had in shaping her political and governing philosophy. Instead, she uses a commute she’s probably taken a thousand times before with her daughter, and lays plain the problem with the Federal government trying to control local industry.
If you’re inclined to such common sense, there’s no need to sell it, because it sells itself. To her credit, Gov. Palin sells this common sense better than most.
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