Going Postal On “Going Rogue”
By Doug Mataconis | Related entries in News, PalinNot surprisingly, The New York Times review of Sarah Palin’s Going Rogue: An American Life
“Going Rogue,” the title of Sarah Palin’s erratic new memoir, comes from a phrase used by a disgruntled McCain aide to describe her going off-message during the campaign: among other things, for breaking with the campaign over its media strategy and its decision to pull out of Michigan, and for speaking out about reports that the Republican Party had spent more than $150,000 on fancy designer duds for her and her family. In fact, the most sustained and vehement barbs in this book are directed not at Democrats or liberals or the press, but at the McCain campaign. The very campaign that plucked her out of Alaska, anointed her the Republican vice-presidential nominee and made her one of the most talked about women on the planet — someone who could command a reported $5 million for writing this book.
In what reads like payback for McCain aides’ disparaging comments about her in the wake of the ticket’s loss to Barack Obama, Ms. Palin depicts the McCain campaign as overscripted, defeatist, disorganized and dunder-headed — slow to shift focus from the Iraq war to the cratering economy, insufficiently tough on Mr. Obama and contradictory in its media strategy. She also claims that the campaign billed her nearly $50,000 for “having been vetted.” The vetting, which was widely criticized in the press as being cursory and rushed, was, she insists, “thorough”: they knew “exactly what they’re getting.”
(…)
All in all, Ms. Palin emerges from “Going Rogue” as an eager player in the blame game, thoroughly ungrateful toward the McCain campaign for putting her on the national stage. As for the McCain campaign, it often feels like a desperate and cynical operation, willing to make a risky Hail Mary pass in order to try to score a tactical win, instead of making a considered judgment as to who might be genuinely qualified to sit a heartbeat away from the Oval Office.
In “Going Rogue,” Ms. Palin talks perfunctorily about fiscal responsibility and a muscular foreign policy, and more passionately about the importance of energy independence, but she is quite up front about the fact that much of her appeal lies in her just-folks, “hockey Mom” ordinariness. She pretends no particular familiarity with the Middle East, the Iraq war or Islamic politics — “I knew the history of the conflict,” she writes, “to the extent that most Americans did.” And she argues that “there’s no better training ground for politics than motherhood.”
Yet, Mr. McCain’s astonishing decision to pick someone with so little experience (less than two years as the governor of Alaska, and before that, two terms as mayor of Wasilla, a town with fewer than 7,000 residents) as his running mate and Ms. Palin’s own surprisingly nonchalant reaction to Mr. McCain’s initial phone call about the vice president’s slot (she writes that it felt “like a natural progression”) underscore just how alarmingly expertise is discounted — or equated with elitism — in our increasingly democratized era, and just how thoroughly colorful personal narratives overshadow policy arguments and actual knowledge
Rush Limbaugh, meanwhile, calls the tome, “one of the most substantive policy books I’ve read.”
Frankly, I didn’t know Rush had read much more than Dr. Seuss before getting around to this book.
This entry was posted on Sunday, November 15th, 2009 and is filed under News, Palin. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
November 16th, 2009 at 11:26 am
I would like to propose a toast:
Here’s to Sarah Palin; may she never – EVER – go away.
I am going to go out on a limb here: No woman since Eleanor Roosevelt has done more to further the cause of progressive politics in the United States of America than our Sarah.
Don’cha just love her? I sure do!
http://www.tomdegan.blogspot.com
Tom Degan
Goshen, NY
November 16th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
so rush just admitted publicly to being clueless about policy?
November 16th, 2009 at 3:08 pm
Suppose for the sake of argument that the book includes substative policy ideas.
What reason do any o9df us have to think these ideas sprung from Sara Palin’s mind. Has she EVER shown herself eager or even able to speak extemporaneously (on the spur of the moment) about such things?Not in my experience.
Palin’s biggest problem is that her celebrity has far outstripped anypossibility of any personal political gravitas. IOW, She’s a lightweight. She’s a hot female Dan Quayle. On a good day.
November 17th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
I don’t know. Dan Quayle seems considerably more intelligent than Sarah Palin.
The way she talks, it is like she is learning everything as she goes. She acts like she is well versed in politcal thoughts and concepts, but cant give you an opinion on them when asked unless they are a hot button issue like the war, abortion, and gays wanting to get married, settle down, and have 2.5 kids like the american dream (which apperently according to some republicans like the one from oklahoma is why he econamy tanked… oh, that, and internet porn).
John McCain was not going to win. Republicans knew, and were open about the fact that this was going to be a uphill battle. She didnt get that memo is seems. McCain, and the republicans were, as expected, agressive to try to bolster and gain as much support as possible, which is the point of a election. Now she is blaming McCain aides for blowing he election.. lady, bush did that for you. He divisively polarized the nation against him that those all important independents and moderates leaned mostly to the left. She focused on the far right, and McCain and Obama tried to focus on the centerist voters that you cant win without.
Sarah… Nice try. But it is always better not to throw people under the bus and make more and more enemies if you have political aspirations for the future, whatever yours might be.
November 17th, 2009 at 2:12 pm
Mrs. Palin should stop. She embarassed herself on the world stage by accepting the VP nomination with nothing to bring to the table. Sen. McCain made a mistake in offering it to her and has lived to regret it. Enough is enough of this pathetic, egotistical woman. Really tired of hearing “I” “I” “I” from her.
November 18th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
Should we really talk about Sarah as if she has anything whatsoever to do with politics? Sarah Palin is all about Sarah Palin and she is laughing her paranoid, pretty-girl-sorority-at-a-community-college-level intellect all the way to the bank. She wrote a “policy book” and spent most of the time settling scores over the pettiest of incidents. “It’s that bitch, Nicole’s, fault! Seriously, she such a bitch, OMG!” Ha! We get a real window into this woman’s mind, and it’s just as convoluted and paranoid and narrow as her interviews would have us believe. She is wonderful! Just a dream come true! She even baited Rush to dive into her narcissistic vortex. Go Sarah! You’re much prettier than Nicole. Seriously.