Tuesday, June 30, 2009

SARAH PALIN

Palin's One of Those Tired, Ambitious, Resentful, Enthusiastic Types

Many people will dissect Todd Purdum's 9,800-word opus on the rise, fall, and continuing journey of Alaska governor Sarah Palin, but perhaps readers ought to be a bit wary when they encounter sentences like this:

Palin herself often sounds tired and resentful these days, as if wondering whether she should have blinked and just said no to John McCain.

Telepathy is a great and rare gift, and I envy reporters who have been granted it through genetic mutation.

Presuming that Purdum has not been studying at Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters, would you look at Palin's behavior, tone, schedule, and activities since the conclusion of last year's campaign and characterize her as "tired and resentful"?

I'm thinking of another lengthy post-election glossy magazine profile of Palin:

That she’d come to view her governorship as a distraction from her efforts to project herself onto the national scene became even more obvious later that month when she delivered only perfunctory opening remarks at the annual two-day convention of the Resource Development Council for Alaska. Although that Anchorage gathering brought together representatives from all of Alaska’s leading energy producers and developers, Palin showed no interest. She fondly recalled the days when “there’d be 20, 30, 40, 50, 60,000 people at these rallies, and they’d be chantin’, when I got introduced, ‘Drill, baby, drill.’ ” Then she made a couple of jokes about the expensive clothes she didn’t get to keep and about Tina Fey, stayed for just one panel, and then she was gone...

And with Palin’s attention shifting several thousand miles to the southeast, Alaskans are starting to catch on. In its January 27 edition, Bradners’ Alaska Legislative Digest, a publication that had long been supportive of Palin, had this to say: “The problem we see is that we continue to see Governor Palin as not really interested in governing, not interested in chasing an issue to the bottom. Further, our assessment is our governor just doesn’t understand the difference between campaigning and governing. We increasingly suspect that Governor Sarah Palin now has a focus that is Washington D.C. beltway politics, and Alaska may pay a price for pandering to interests quite far to the right of center.”

Can she be simultaneously tired, resentful, and thinking she shouldn't have run for vice-president, and at the same time, nostalgic for the campaign trail, eager to return to national issues, and focused on Washington D.C. Beltway politics?

Or is it that Sarah Palin is now a blank slate, upon which national magazine writers project whatever negative narrative they prefer?

06/30 09:21 AMShare