The fact that the former governor of Alaska wrote a book that shot up to #1 on multiple best seller lists without it even being published — that shows how much star power Sarah Palin still possess. Simply put, there are people who love to hate her, hate to love her, love to love her, and hate to hate her. If there’s any other politician who can match President Obama’s celebrity status, I’m going to say it’s Palin.
So what’s her life like after governorship? Well, a little confusing and lame, to be frank:
Palin’s actions keep defying rational explanation. Her sudden retreat from her job as Alaska governor made her seem a quitter — especially when she couldn’t coherently justify the resignation during her surprise July 4 weekend announcement. Even if Palin’s pullout had been a reasonable decision, it seemed as if she had not consulted anyone with PR or political sense on how best to handle the controversial move.
Since then, her performance as a politician with a chance of snagging the GOP presidential nomination has been — to be polite — unsteady. On July 17, Palin, who had become a prolific Twitterer, sent out this message to her tweeps: “10 dys til less politically correct twitters fly frm my fingertps outside State site.” In other words, Palin — who had recently been quoting Aristotle and Thomas Paine in her tweets — would soon dump her AkGovSarahPalin Twitter account, which was being followed by 150,000 people, and start sharing her observations via a new Twitter feed. But she didn’t keep that promise — and has yet to set up a new Twitter account for all those folks who yearn for her 140-character messages. Why keep her base waiting? Any good adviser would have recommended that she keep the tweets flowing.
Toward the end of July, Palin found herself in another curious predicament when she apparently retreated from a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. On her Facebook page — her communications platform of choice these days — Palin maintained that she had not committed to attend the Simi Valley Republican Women’s event. Yet that GOP-gals outfit had issued a press release declaring that she had indeed agreed to speak at their shindig at the Reagan Library. As with an earlier dust-up over an appearance at a Republican fundraiser in Washington, it appeared that Palin couldn’t handle a routine scheduling matter.
Then there’s her book. A few days ago, a GOPer close to Mitt Romney, another potential contender for the 2012 Republican nomination, was laughing as we talked about Palin’s book, due out next month. He was tittering especially about its title, “Going Rogue.” That phrase was used by John McCain’s aides toward the end of the 2008 election to describe Palin’s off-message behavior on the campaign trail. “What voter wants a rogue president?” this Mitt-friendly Republican said to me, pointing out that Romney has finished a book of his own on weighty policy matters that will come out next year. Its title: “No Apology: The Case of American Greatness.”
What is she doing, wasting all the attention and support? Is she satisfied with just writing books and giving speeches overseas? We all thought she was much more ambitious than that. And how can you not be with a book titled Going Rogue?
One word of caution to Palin and her aides: there’s a difference between a maverick and an amateur.
