re: #47 Simply Sarah

I have to say that I’m still puzzled. Remember when Palin was announced as McCain’s running mate and, once everyone got past the “Who the heck is Sarah Palin?” phase, we learned that she was a pretty well regarded, well liked, and popular governor supposedly known for being able to reach across the aisle? What happened to all that? Was that all an act in the past? A misreading? Or did the national spotlight just make her go crazy? I’m honestly curious and I admit to not having looked into that history much since the beginning, as I was more focused on the present in regards to her being a potential VP.

I really can’t assess Palin’s early career as governor from this distance…physical and chronological…but she took office in December of 2006, and was tapped by McCain’s campaign seven months later. So, seven months in a (demographically) small state where she knew people, had local credibility, and didn’t have to deal with the vast range of national and international issues she didn’t know anything about.

From Newsweek’s article about “Game Change”, it sounds as though the early days on the McCain campaign were very difficult. Her huge competency gaps became apparent, they tried to coach her, and she shut down.

I honestly don’t know if it was they, or she, or a combination of the two that came up with the explicit articulation of the culture-wars, authentic-America, I’m-a-frontier-mama schtick she eventually came to embody, but it clearly resonated for her. She could reason that she wasn’t caught out because she was unprepared, but because THEY were elitists, mean, sneering, people whose kids didn’t play hockey and thought she was a hick, not realizing that she was AMERICA.

One of the many books that came out on her (an attack, not a hagiography) reports that after the election results came in, she yelled at one of the kids that “We weren’t good enough for America. We’ll never be good enough for America.” I don’t like the woman, but for some reason that just breaks my heart. Jesus, it was a VIP run with a doomed candidate, a once-in-lifetime chance that just happened to happen…who takes something like that so to heart?