Sarah Palin, ‘Going Rogue’
SARAH PALIN, the Alaska Governor and 2008 Vice Presidential nominee, was born in Idaho in 1964 as Sarah Heath, but moved to Alaska with her family as an infant. She settled in the town of Wasilla, entered and won a beauty pageant and became Miss Wasilla 1984.
As the intense point guard on the 1982 state championship basketball team, her nickname was “Sarah Barracuda.” There were flutes and trombones in the house, but for her and her siblings, sports was king. Sarah planned to be a sportscaster, and later named her daughter Bristol partly because ESPN is located in Bristol, Connecticut.
After her fiercely targeted and determined teenage years, Palin drifted a bit after high school. She attended four different colleges — five if you count the University of Idaho twice — with little distinction. She was briefly a sportscaster. She eloped with her high school sweetheart, Todd Palin. They seemed to love each other and to communicate well, and in time, they raised five children.
When Sarah Palin entered politics, she hit her stride. In 1992, she won a seat on the Wasilla City Council. In 1996, she managed to get herself elected mayor of Wasilla. The mayor’s race had always been a low-key affair, with the usual suspects going around canvassing among friends. Campaign war chests were small, and the issues quite local: roads, Police and Fire, the quality of local services. Wasilla saw itself as a pioneer town, with a libertarian view of social issues and a contempt for calculated campaign strategies.
But Sarah Palin noticed things were changing in Wasilla. The town was growing, and many of the new arrivals were conservative Christians. Palin made the mayor’s race not about who could deliver local services but about gun rights and, especially, about abortion. Abortion had never been a hot button issue in Wasilla before. Most residents thought: We stay out of each other’s business. But by campaigning on her rejection of abortion, Palin was able to mobilize support from well-funded national Pro-Life groups.
After winning the race, she also told her department heads they were not to speak to the press. This was common enough in big cities, but the gag order was not well received in Wasilla where everyone knew everyone, and the reporter might be your neighbor’s brother-in-law.
As mayor of Wasilla, Palin hired a well-connected Washington lobbyist, Steven Silver, a former chief of staff to U.S. Senator Ted Stevens, to get Federal earmarks for Wasilla. And he did — $27 million dollars worth. Partly because she was female, and partly because of her lightweight background, Palin’s intelligence and ambition were underrated.
Palin’s own view seems to have been that she’d succeeded at beauty pageants and basketball tournaments — so why shouldn’t she be a big star in politics? Wasn’t politics kind of a mix of a beauty contest and a basketball game? In 2006, she ran for Governor of Alaska — and won.
Palin’s election was made easier when the incumbent, Frank Murkowski, made two big mistakes. First, he’d tried to negotiate a pipeline deal without consulting the Alaska legislature; and second, he’d appointed his own daughter, Lisa, to the Senate seat he vacated. Sarah Palin was a fresh face. She ran a vigorous campaign against nepotism and secret deals. She promised to stand up for “the people of Alaska.” Palin honed her act as ‘a hockey mom,’ without a ‘big, fat resume,’ ‘outside the old boys network’ — many of the themes she used later while running for vice president.
Alaskans who’d protested they weren’t against women in powerful positions; they were just against women like Lisa Murkowki getting powerful positions handed to them, were pleased to support Sarah Palin. In 2006, Palin got 51% of the vote in the Republican primary. Another candidate finished second. Frank Murkowski got just 19% and finished a distant third.
Governor Palin presided over Alaska at a time when oil prices were very high, and so she got to share credit for $2,000 dividend checks. She also convinced the legislature to send out an extra $1,200 check for every Alaskan man, woman and child. Governor Palin’s main success was to announce a 500-million natural gas pipeline project. But even that was suspect; the oil producers had not committed to using the pipeline; and much of the pipeline would have to run through land owned by Native American tribes in Canada, who were not consulted and likely to be extremely litigious. Palin and her people announced they were confident all this would be sorted out within seven years.
Governor Palin courted prominent Republican pundits like William Kristol and Fred Barnes, and they began writing glowing testimonials to her. Former presidential speechwriter Michael Gerson called Sarah Palin “a mix between Annie Oakley and Joan of Arc.” Barnes told people Palin was unfazed by big crowds and had “star quality.”
She or family members of hers had gone into Canada to use the Canadian health care system, but in public she toed the line of Republican orthodoxy: ‘A single-payer system was “socialized medicine” and would deliver terrible care. American health care was the best in the world.’ Though global warming was already affecting Alaska in alarming ways, Palin toed the line on global warming, too; there was no reason to believe it was man-made, she insisted, and no need to closely examine our habits of pollution and consumption.
In the summer of 2007, when top Republicans, including some top writers for The Weekly Standard and National Review, came through Juneau on cruises, Palin invited them to the governor’s mansion for sumptuous lunches, prayer and good conversation. Rich Lowry, editor of National Review met Palin this way and was impressed. So were John Bolton, the former Bush ambassador to the U.N, and Victor Davis Hanson, a conservative historian. Reporters Fred Barnes and William Kristol began talking up her chances in national politics. Dick Morris, the political consultant, who loves to meet rising political stars and grab credit for their rise, met with Palin and urged her to hold onto her “outsider” image.
In 2008, Republican presidential nominee John McCain probably hoped to run with Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut as his vice presidential nominee. Lieberman was a brave heretic on the Iraq issue, as McCain saw it. But Senator Lieberman’s pro-choice views outraged much of the Republican base. Mitt Romney was available — a rich, handsome man, with a strong record as a businessman. But McCain put great emphasis on being authentic, thought Romney was a fake, and felt no connection with him. And so, with no dream candidate out there, with a weakness for “mavericks” and a love of the unexpected, John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his vice presidential running mate.
McCain’s campaign manager, Steve Schmidt, loved the choice of Palin. Republicans had been quietly rejoicing at the lasting bitterness felt by Hillary Clinton supporters when their heroine lost the nomination to Barack Obama. With a charismatic female vice presidential nominee, McCain and his people thought they might peel off millions of female voters from the Democrats. McCain felt that many women would conclude that voting for a woman is always a feminist act, no matter what the candidate’s politics.
Palin didn’t do the things politicians usually do when they’re plucked from obscurity. She didn’t worry about whether or not she knew enough to be vice president — or president. She didn’t bone up on all the issues, nor did she choose a few issues on which to pose as an expert in interviews or speeches. Instead, she told people: “My life is in God’s hands. If he’s got doors open for me… I’m going to go through those doors.”
John McCain had promised to always put America first, to put the needs of his country above his own political ambitions — but this choice undercut that claim: Sarah Palin was clearly NOT the best president-in-waiting that McCain could have found. And McCain’s serious health issues made it urgent that he find a first-rate vice presidential nominee. McCain made it worse by refusing to concede that Palin was inexperienced and shallow. He boasted of Palin that “She knows more about energy than probably anyone else in the United States of America” — a loony claim. Worse, John McCain didn’t know Sarah Palin when he chose her. He’d spent less than three hours with her in his whole life when he named her his vice presidential running mate.
As a vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin made a great debut. In her acceptance speech in St. Paul, Minnesota, she was poised, smart, pretty — and fearless. National political operatives, sizing her up as a candidate, were impressed. They found her magnetic, a quick study, a hard worker. A game-changer.
“Here’s a little news flash,” Sarah Palin said. “I’m not a member of the permanent political establishment. And I’ve learned quickly these past few days that if you’re not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone. But I’m not going to Washington to seek their good opinion.”
Instinctively, she knew the strategic thing was to not be defensive about her small-town background. Instead, Palin went on the offensive, to twit Barack Obama: “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer’ — except that you have actual responsibilities.” She ignored the fact that Obama had served in the U.S. Senate, and impressed other Senators there, while she’d done nothing of the kind. But it was a well-written speech, beautifully delivered and, to her delight, this speech about NOT being an insider… made her an insider. It put her on the national political map. It made her a conceivable presidential candidate in 2012 or beyond. It made her a member of the very same political establishment she so loved to mock.
To those inclined to dislike eastern elites, who thought more ordinary people and more Alaskans should be in politics, Sarah Palin seemed a refreshing change. There were also voters who were pleased by the prospect of a candidate who would separate feminism from liberalism, making clear that being a tough, proud, ambitious woman is good — but that such a woman need not be a liberal.
Palin’s decision not to abort a Down syndrome fetus made her seem a symbol to many Republicans of their party’s commitment to family and “a culture of life.”
But anti-intellectualism and a scorn for scientific facts was moving into the mainstream of the Republican Party and Palin became a symbol of that. To voters who like to hear candidates make nuanced arguments about complex issues, Sarah Palin seemed abysmally unprepared. In an interview with Katie Couric of CBS in October of 2008, Palin gave her view opinion that Roe v. Wade should have been decided on the state level, not by the U.S. Supreme Court. Fair enough. But she couldn’t say anything more about the Supreme Court or its history. A traditional candidate for national office could discuss the Supreme Court’s historic relation to slavery, or to private property, or to unions or voting rights or privacy rights. Palin confirmed that she’d often disagreed with Supreme Court rulings — but couldn’t name a single instance other than Roe v. Wade. Clinging to a simple “talking point,” she seemed badly out of her depth.
Couric asked her what newspapers or magazines she read. Palin replied: “All of ’em, any of ’em that have been in front of me over all these years.” When the pundits decided she had looked badly unprepared in the Couric interview, Palin responded by attacking journalists and their “gotcha” questions. But as Jon Stewart replied: “It doesn’t make it a ‘gotcha” question just because it got ya.” Asking a politician running for office what they read is a softball question.
When she used the word “refudiate” and was mocked for it, she tweeted back that Shakespeare coined new words, too. Asked what foreign policy experience she had, she’d have been better off blithely admitting she had none — but that she had good instincts, was a quick study, and would bone up on what she had to know. Instead, she told Sean Hannity that she had experience dealing with illegal aliens because Alaska has Eskimos and other foreigners.
To those who felt it’s a complex world out there, with decisions to be made carefully, Palin’s boasting that she never hesitates (“You can’t blink”) sounded like more of the governing style that had served George W. Bush and the United States so poorly. Her grasp of American history and civics was weak. She described Paul Revere as if he was a guy who devoted his life to defending gun owners and the right to be armed. When she said during the vice presidential debate that she was “thankful the Constitution would allow a bit more authority given to the vice president,” it sounded like she was looking at Dick Cheney’s personally annotated copy of the U.S. Constitution.
On the one hand, Palin enjoyed playing the good old Alaska girl, telling people the secret to good chili was to get moose burger in there. She’d be asked about low poll numbers for McCain-Palin and would reply with a smile, “Poles are for strippers and cross country skiers.” But having played the ordinary gal from Alaska, Palin then seemed to resent the way some of her statements — such as that you can see Russia from Alaska — were mocked and presented out of context in the media.
Palin and Hillary Clinton, so different in their political views, both felt that many people projected unfairly onto them their own feelings about the women’s movement, about women trying to gain political power.
It became a national news story that Palin had fired a Public Safety official who refused to fire a state trooper going through a messy divorce with Sarah Palin’s sister. “Troopergate,” they called it. Stephen Branchflower, a veteran prosecutor, wrote a 263-page report on the firing which concluded “Governor Palin abused her power by violating [a section of] the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act…” Palin then claimed vindication, saying she was “very, very pleased to be cleared of any legal wrongdoing, any hint of any kind of unethical activity there.” The Anchorage Daily News rightly called this statement “Orwellian.”
For someone who called herself a “hockey Mom” from Alaska, Palin certainly ran up some big clothing bills — tens of thousands of dollars at high-end shops.
And what about Governor Palin’s embrace of the system, using well-connected insiders to steer Federal pork to Alaskans? Wasn’t that anathema to the John McCain philosophy? Palin tried to distance herself from earmarking, even claiming during the 2008 campaign “I’ve championed reform to end the abuses of earmark spending by Congress.” No one else remembered her doing that.
The McCain-Palin campaign fizzled and in November 2008 Barack Obama and Joe Biden won decisively, 365 electoral votes for Obama-Biden to 173 for McCain-Palin. Among female voters, Obama and Biden won by 57%-43%. Palin would have been wiser to talk soothingly about “reorganization” instead of gleefully firing people from her campaign.
By the last days of the McCain presidential campaign, it was clear there was serious friction between Sarah Palin’s people and John McCain’s people. Palin was proud of her maverick political instincts, and sure she could pick up votes for McCain by departing from the campaign script. Steve Schmidt and other McCain aides insisted the stakes were so high and the campaign schedule so tight, that Palin’s words must be tightly scripted. When the McCain-Palin ticket went down to defeat, Sarah Palin hoped to make her own official concession speech, which no defeated vice presidential nominee had ever done. When the McCain camp ridiculed that idea, it fed the idea in the Palin camp that McCain’s people were sexist — and jealous of Sarah to boot.
Eight months after the 2008 Presidential election, and 16 months before her term in office was ending, Sarah Palin abruptly resigned as governor. WHY she did no one has ever been able to figure out. She never claimed the usual reason: wanting “to spend more time with my family.” Some said she was tired of Alaska politics. Others thought she was bailing out of politics altogether. Or had she seen up close how hard it was to run for President, and wanted to do it right, undistracted by Alaska’s business? Some said she wanted more time to deal with an ethics complaint against her — or to work with the ghostwriter of her memoir, after signing a lucrative book deal.
Whatever the reason, the decision to resign seemed rushed and badly handled. The announcement came on July 3rd, right before a holiday weekend. The press got just two hours notice. Palin didn’t bother to give John McCain any warning, nor had she told Alaska’s congressional delegation — or her in-laws. Palin had very few supporters on hand for her announcement. So the general story line, both in Alaska and in the national media, was that Sarah Palin still considered herself presidential timber, but had quit as Governor of Alaska because the job was too stressful.
Then in late 2009, her memoir came out. “Going Rogue” was a 413-page book written in four months. Some readers were amused, others disgusted, by how many pages Palin spent in the book blaming her communications aide for the expensive clothes Palin wore. She also had harsh words for Steve Schmidt, who’d done so much to convince John McCain to name Palin his running mate. “Going Rogue” strongly suggests that Sarah Palin traveled frugally on the campaign trail; avoided schmoozing with big donors because she preferred to be with blue collar Americans; entered politics only to help others; and stoutly opposed the Wall Street Bailouts of 2008. All of those statements are highly dubious.
“Going Rogue” also suggests that Palin took no offense at the very serious charge that she didn’t know enough about the world to hold its most powerful job. No, what stuck in her craw was the idea that she wasn’t ‘authentic.’ “Going Rogue “was long on edge and attitude, but gave no indication that Sarah Palin knew what the President of the United States does; or had realized that marketing herself as a national political star and traveling the nation as a candidate would end her role as a small-town gal.
In 2010, on Glenn Beck’s radio show, Palin seemed to think that North Korea — not South Korea — was our ally. In 2013, Fox News cut ties with Palin. She had no fresh takes on issues being debated in the country, and Fox’s viewers had grown bored of her. In 2019, after 31 years of marriage, Sarah learned that Todd wanted a divorce — and she learned this by an e-mail from his lawyer.
In 2022, she flirted with running for the Senate in Alaska, saying, “If God wants me to run, I will.” She is now a candidate to be the lone congress member from Alaska, and is leading the Republican field.