EVER since Abraham Lincoln made a virtue of log cabins, crafting the right autobiography has been an essential task for anyone seeking high office in America. On Monday November 16th Sarah Palin, ex-governor of Alaska and failed vice-presidential candidate in 2008, made an eagerly awaited appearance on the Oprah Winfrey show, as part of the launch of her biography. That book, “Going Rogue”, is already topping the bestseller charts, as readers rush to read about gossip and infighting during last year’s presidential campaign and to size up Mrs Palin herself.
On television on Monday Mrs Palin talked about her time as John McCain's running mate. She recalled an awkward series of unflattering television interviews with Katie Couric, in which Mrs Palin struggled to answer simple questions about international affairs, calling the occasion a “gotcha” moment. She added that the media had no understanding of ordinary people like her and her family. Mrs Palin has also given an acerbic narrative of how she was “mishandled” by Mr McCain's advisers, whom she says tried to hide her away from the spotlight. Mr McCain has diplomatically called the book “a good account” of the campaign, but he has not responded to Mrs Palin's claim that she was not repaid a $50,000 fee for vetting her background.
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Reviews of her book are divided along predictable lines. The New York Times calls it “erratic” and characterises the author as “a former beauty queen with a George W. Bush-like aptitude for mangling the English language”. By contrast the Wall Street Journal gushes that she comes across as “a prodigious worker capable of mastering complicated issues” and is not “the prejudiced, dim-witted ideologue of the popular liberal imagination”.
Mrs Palin has not faded into the Alaskan sunset since she stepped down abruptly as governor in July. Since then she has become central to the debate about the future of the Republican Party. She moulds herself as an anti-establishment conservative in the Reagan tradition, as do many Republicans with no office in Washington, DC, and she is keenly attuned to activist disquiet within the party. She made a spectacular intervention in the recent congressional election in upstate New York by rejecting the official Republican and backing a third-party conservative candidate. He came within a whisker of winning, but the normally safe Republican district was taken by the Democrats.
Mrs Palin's stance of “no more 'politics as usual'” has fired up conservative activists. Moderate Republican candidates in next year's primaries for the mid-term elections are nervous that they, too, could be subject to a missive from Mrs Palin’s Facebook page. The Washington Post reports that the front-runner for the party's nomination in Illinois's Senate race is seeking her approval. In other Senate elections, notably California and Florida, the “establishment” Republican is facing a well-organised conservative opponent in the primary.
It is unclear how far Mrs Palin's ambitions stretch, but she is positioning herself as a coupon-clipping hockey mom at a time when Americans are glum and Republican fortunes are rising. A recent Pew survey found strong anti-incumbent sentiment among voters, with two-thirds expressing dissatisfaction with the way things are going in America and only 34% saying that most members of Congress should be re-elected in 2010, a similar level of animosity that existed before the ground-shaking mid-terms in 1994 and 2006. Gallup now gives the Republicans an advantage of 48% to 44% over the Democrats in a generic congressional ballot. More worrying for the Democrats is a big drop in support from independent voters; they favoured a generic Republican candidate by 52% to 30% in Gallup's poll.
Most Americans, including a sizeable portion of Republicans, still think that Mrs Palin is too inexperienced to lead the country. But for now, some Republicans are pleased she is creating interest in the party again, as Rudy Giuliani put it. When Ms Winfrey asked if she was thinking about 2012, Mrs Palin coyly replied that she was concentrating on 2010 and the mid-terms. But she added: “It's nice not to be handled…to go where I want to go”.
On television on Monday Mrs Palin talked about her time as John McCain's running mate. She recalled an awkward series of unflattering television interviews with Katie Couric, in which Mrs Palin struggled to answer simple questions about international affairs, calling the occasion a “gotcha” moment. She added that the media had no understanding of ordinary people like her and her family. Mrs Palin has also given an acerbic narrative of how she was “mishandled” by Mr McCain's advisers, whom she says tried to hide her away from the spotlight. Mr McCain has diplomatically called the book “a good account” of the campaign, but he has not responded to Mrs Palin's claim that she was not repaid a $50,000 fee for vetting her background.
Click here
Reviews of her book are divided along predictable lines. The New York Times calls it “erratic” and characterises the author as “a former beauty queen with a George W. Bush-like aptitude for mangling the English language”. By contrast the Wall Street Journal gushes that she comes across as “a prodigious worker capable of mastering complicated issues” and is not “the prejudiced, dim-witted ideologue of the popular liberal imagination”.
Mrs Palin has not faded into the Alaskan sunset since she stepped down abruptly as governor in July. Since then she has become central to the debate about the future of the Republican Party. She moulds herself as an anti-establishment conservative in the Reagan tradition, as do many Republicans with no office in Washington, DC, and she is keenly attuned to activist disquiet within the party. She made a spectacular intervention in the recent congressional election in upstate New York by rejecting the official Republican and backing a third-party conservative candidate. He came within a whisker of winning, but the normally safe Republican district was taken by the Democrats.
Mrs Palin's stance of “no more 'politics as usual'” has fired up conservative activists. Moderate Republican candidates in next year's primaries for the mid-term elections are nervous that they, too, could be subject to a missive from Mrs Palin’s Facebook page. The Washington Post reports that the front-runner for the party's nomination in Illinois's Senate race is seeking her approval. In other Senate elections, notably California and Florida, the “establishment” Republican is facing a well-organised conservative opponent in the primary.
It is unclear how far Mrs Palin's ambitions stretch, but she is positioning herself as a coupon-clipping hockey mom at a time when Americans are glum and Republican fortunes are rising. A recent Pew survey found strong anti-incumbent sentiment among voters, with two-thirds expressing dissatisfaction with the way things are going in America and only 34% saying that most members of Congress should be re-elected in 2010, a similar level of animosity that existed before the ground-shaking mid-terms in 1994 and 2006. Gallup now gives the Republicans an advantage of 48% to 44% over the Democrats in a generic congressional ballot. More worrying for the Democrats is a big drop in support from independent voters; they favoured a generic Republican candidate by 52% to 30% in Gallup's poll.
Most Americans, including a sizeable portion of Republicans, still think that Mrs Palin is too inexperienced to lead the country. But for now, some Republicans are pleased she is creating interest in the party again, as Rudy Giuliani put it. When Ms Winfrey asked if she was thinking about 2012, Mrs Palin coyly replied that she was concentrating on 2010 and the mid-terms. But she added: “It's nice not to be handled…to go where I want to go”.