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Swimming with Barracuda: The Continued Adventures of Sarah Palin

Alex Massie

Tuesday, 30th June 2009

What next for Sarah Palin? Todd Purdum's Vanity Fair profile is designed to be, as Jason Zengerle puts it, brutal. But, as the Economist's Democracy in America notes, there are times when it also, perhaps unwittingly, makes one feel a little sorry for Governor Palin. Whatever her shortcomings, she wasn't the one who put her into a national race she was ill-prepared to handle and, whatever else may be said about her behaviour on the campaign trail, unattributable sniping from John McCain's advisers should be taken with some salt, not least because it so conveniently absolves McCain of the mistakes that helped doom his campaign.

Palin is a useful target for just about everyone these days. And while I agree with Philip Klein that there's not much that's truly new in the piece, it does actually show how, in different circumstances and, perhaps, a different time, Palin could have offered the campaign something significant. Here, for instance, is part of what she said to a pro-lifecrowd in Indiana earlier this year:

In Evansville, though, Palin concentrated on the task at hand: an emphatic defense of the anti-abortion cause. But in doing so she made a startling confession about what she thought when she learned she was pregnant at 43 with her youngest child, Trig, who arrived in April 2008, as the world now knows, with Down syndrome. “I had found out that I was pregnant while out of state first,” Palin told the crowd. “While out of state, there just for a fleeting moment, I thought, Nobody knows me here. Nobody would ever know. I thought, Wow, it is easy to think maybe of trying to change the circumstances and no one would know—no one would ever know. Then when my amniocentesis results came back, showing what they called abnormalities—oh, dear God—I knew, I had instantly an understanding, for that fleeting moment, why someone would believe it could seem possible to change those circumstances, just make it all go away, get some normalcy back in life.”

It doesn't matter whether you agree with Palin's views on abortion or not: this is powerful stuff. This is the candidate that could have done more than simply enthuse a conservative rump that was never entirely comfortable with McCain. This was the kind of candidate who could have been a game-changer.

Of course, it didn't work out like that but when you see Palin talking like this you can see what attracted the McCain campaign. If McCain had been a decade younger, Palin's ignorance of national policy, let alone foreign and security policy, issues would not have been such a grievous, crippling handicap. She could have been the PTA Vice-President, a politician who understood the problems of "ordinary" and "hard-working" families because she'd endured some of those problems herself - including spells when she and her family were only covered by catastrophic health insurance. Couple that with the still-alluring notion of a candidate from the American frontier and you have the outlines of an Idea that could have been tremendously powerful. That is, the potential impact of a certain kind of homespun, empathetic populism should not be dismissed or even discounted.

In the end it was all far too much far too soon and Palin was, not always unfairly, reduced to a cartoonish set of stereotypes. That's had damaging consequences for her future chances: not least because her popularity in Alaska has tumbled. Theoretically, however, it should still be possible for Palin, if she wants it, to be a dangerous candidate on the national scene in 2012. Her appeal to a significant section of the Republican party remains obvious and, if she learns the lessons of 2008, there is still the possibility that she could convince voters that she deserves a second look in 2012. Granted, there's no guarantee that she will have learnt those lessons and, right now, it still seems unlikely that she can win the GOP nomination but she remains, whether one approves of this or not, a star in a party that needs all the stars it can get.

The shame of Paln's emergence last year isn't that she blundered so badly, it's that there was something there but that, after her convention speech, that something was lost in the tumult that engulfed her and, in the end, helped destroy the McCain campaign.

As always, we should remember that Scott Fitzgerald's famous quip that "there are no second acts in American lives" exists solely so that it can be proved wrong. Like most people, I've no idea where the Sarah Palin Story will end. But will it continue to run and run? You betcha...

UPDATE: As you might expect, Andrew has a different take. Having initially dismissed Purdum's "absurd puff piece" Andrew read it and declares it "a superb summary of the Wasilla whack-job". And, for sure, there's plenty in it that's not good news for the governor. It's the bits that don't confirm much of what we learned about her that I think are more interesting.

Filed under: GOP (140 more articles) , McCain (53 more articles) , Palin (35 more articles)

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S. Weasel

June 30th, 2009 9:25pm Report this comment

I estimate about half the votes John McCain got were due to Sarah Palin. I know I had no intention of voting for that dried up old nutcase before she came on board. The woman is both sharp and competent, and it's taking all the biased reporting and selective editing of the old media to make it seem otherwise.

If the left doesn't see her as a very real political threat, why are they hounding her so relentlessly?

Rab o'Ruglen

June 30th, 2009 9:28pm Report this comment

You cannot be serious Alex. If the GOP has not realised by now that the game has changed and that fielding candidates who can hardly string two sentences together (or if they can manage that yet still talk rubbish) is no longer acceptable to the American people, then they cannot ever expect to regain power and thank God for it.

Francis

June 30th, 2009 10:19pm Report this comment

Mr Massie assumes we share his left wing assumptions and accept his left wing narrative. I for one don't and suspect I am not the only one.

The Beltway bubble view is interesting only in so far as it reveals the malign influence of the media. However we live in teh age of the internet and can make up our own minds wihtout relying on journalistic intermediaries.

Thanks to the internet inter alia I saw most of one of Mrs Palin's rallies (in Virginia) and it was easy to see why she was chosens as running mate and why after she was chosen, until the Lehmans's collapse the Republicans were ahead in the polls.

ben

June 30th, 2009 10:21pm Report this comment

It's "powerful stuff" all right -- it speaks powerfully to Sarah Palin, like most people, being pro-choice when it comes down to it. She evaluated her options; she was glad to have them; and she took the one that she thought was best for her. As it should be. As she doesn't want it to be for others.

Vern

June 30th, 2009 11:45pm Report this comment

Dear Alex

As you well know Sarah Palin doesn't matter, at least not as much as many other things happening in the USA. Like Rush Limbaugh, she is a red herring tossed about by Democrat strategists and their allies to divert attention from the actions of the new centre of power. And yet you endlessly bang on about her, instead of offering a meaningful critique of what's going on in America. Andrew Sullivan fairly disgraced himself with his obsessive rantings against her and his slavish worship of Obama. Nothing he says on the topic is interesting either.

Regards,

Vern

Michael Byrne

June 30th, 2009 11:46pm Report this comment

"Whatever her shortcomings, she wasn't the one who put her into a national race she was ill-prepared to handle...." She was EXACTLY THE ONE who put herself into a national race she was ill-prepared to handle. When invited to be on the ticket, rather than saying, "Mr. McCain, have you lost your mind?", she said, "You Betcha!!" Mr. Massie, are you so deranged to believe Ms. Palin was a marionette, devoid of free will?

TheAgedP

July 1st, 2009 12:29am Report this comment

Forget nutcase Sullivan...Christopher Badeaux did an excellent demolition job...http://tinyurl.com/m69gs9..the VF piece was a state of the art hit piece by a left wing hack which merely rehashed ancient fare. According to Purdum he went to Alaska and just happened to bump into folks like Hickel, Green, Bitney and Erickson who had axes to grind then spoke to the same bunch of anonymous GOP staffers who gave the unattributed quotes. He only mentions Evansville in the context of the Trig doubt and leaves out the Auburn visit completely preferring to focus on Letterman. The significance of Evansville and Auburn was that people crowded to see and hear her. Auburn in particular is a blue district in a blue state yet 20000 turned up. She did interviews with Hannity, Lauer and wolf Blitzer. The blitzer interview in particular was interesting - he threw her some curved balls which she returned quite deftly especially on energy issues (a big area of debate in the US)
Now according to Purdum after November she should have disappeared off the radar. Certainly between January and May she remained out of the lower 48 and the only stuff coming out was about Levi. She should have been dead in the water but the fact is Evansville and Auburn proved that she still has star power.
The fact is that even though she has said nothing about 2012 romney and other GOP hopefuls are still very nervous of her appeal because even if she decided not to go for the GOP nomination 2012 her refusal to endorse would be the death warrant of any Republican hopeful. Its also interesting to reflect that although the Democrats claim to despise her they seem to spend an awful lot of time using the Purdums of the world to try to bring her down.

Ted

July 1st, 2009 12:31pm Report this comment

One observation about Sarah Palin that sticks deep inside like a dagger: Palin fits the description of an NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder) to a tee. This fact, which should frighten the bejesus out of everyone, is also the one that Kristol fears most, as its the first one he trots out and dismisses not at all convincingly:

"Is there any real chance that "several" Alaskans independently told Purdum that they had consulted the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders? I don’t believe it for a moment. I’ve (for better or worse) moved in pretty well-educated circles in my life, and I’ve gone decades without “several” people telling me they had consulted the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders."

Anyone with enough experience in life has encountered dangerous people like NPD narcissists and ASPD sociopaths -- Palin's documented behavior closely fits both diagnoses, which often run in tandem.

For a partisan Democratic example, just look at Jonathan Edwards, another pol who fits NPD traits to a tee (http://www.slate.com/id/2213740):

"John Edwards outed himself as one when forced to confess an adulterous affair. (Given his comical vanity, the deceitful way he used his marriage for his advancement, and his self-elevation as an embodiment of the common man while living in a house the size of an arena, it sounds like a pretty good diagnosis.)"

Palin is very probably NPD, and maybe ASPD too (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASPD). Based on this alone, her political career should be dead, no matter what people think of her actual politics.

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