Going rogue : an American life (original 2009; udgave 2009)

In Palin's snug and self-satisfied world, hockey and basketball matter more than global warming or the spread of nuclear weapons, and a man is judged by his vehicles. (She says of Todd, whom she met in high school: "Not only was he one of the only kids in town who owned his own ride – he owned two, the Mustang and a 1973 Ford F-150 long-bed pickup that he used to haul a pair of Polaris snowmachines.") In the course of more than 400 breathless pages, one learns enough to shudder at the thought of President Palin.

The first half of "Going Rogue" is devoted to Palin's life before becoming famous, the second to settling scores with the McCain advisers and with a "Washington-New York media constellation" that she regards as biased and cruel.

One critic described Palin as being "ungrateful" to the McCain campaign. Why? Because in her book Palin returns fire on the anonymous campaign strategists who called her a "diva" and "whackjob" to eager reporters. What was she supposed to do? Play the role of the orphan Oliver Twist and ask, "Please, sir, I want some more"?

Sarah Palin is selling a personality, not a platform. That's not dumb. She's doing the best she can with what she has to work with. She quotes her father's line upon her resignation this summer as Alaska's governor: "Sarah's not retreating, she's reloading." On evidence of this book, Sarah Palin is charging toward 2012 shooting blanks.

Maybe in their business lives, conservatives are the stern, unforgiving masters of capitalist lore. But when it comes to politics, oh, do they love a whiner!

"Going Rogue" is so obviously a campaign biography that a reader comes away trying to figure out what he thinks of Palin's presidential chances rather than what he thinks of her.

Her critique of the [McCain] campaign's strategy is about as sophisticated as her discussion of policy, and just as circumscribed by her own experience.

"Through it all, Mrs. Palin emerges as a new style of feminist: a politician who took on the Ole Boy network and won; a wife with a supportive husband whose career takes second place to hers; and a mother who, unlike working women of an earlier age, isn’t shy about showcasing her family responsibilities. She writes with sensitivity and affection about her gay college roommate, and she confesses her anguish when she found out that she was carrying a baby with Down syndrome. That experience, she says, helped her to understand why a woman might be tempted to have an abortion. This is not the prejudiced, dim-witted ideologue of the popular liberal imagination."

“Going Rogue” is part cagey spin job, part earnest autobiography, part payback hit job. Its most compelling sections deal not with politics, but with Ms. Palin’s life in Alaska and her family.

A more hateful book won't be published in 2009. Palin spends the bulk of Rogue smearing her critics—an opponent is dismissed as a crazy woman obsessed with falafel, and Katie Couric is an opportunist who manipulated Palin's interviews into incoherence. She twice accuses the Obama campaign of stealing its "change" theme from her early Alaskan campaigns (unsurprisingly, she doesn't mention hope). When she discovers that her last son has Down syndrome, she seems most thrilled that she has a personal object lesson against pro-choicers. (Palin also proudly, and literally, uses her daughter Piper as a pro-life poster child.)

There is not one shred of that great conservative ideal, personal responsibility, in Going Rogue. When she's not wielding her children as clubs to prove political points (or complaining that the media can't stop writing about her children), Palin whines about her victimhood—at the hands of the press, McCain campaign manager Steve Schmidt (who, she passive-aggressively notes, couldn't refrain from swearing in front of her children), and liberals—until the very end.

Palin displays virtually no introspection. When McCain asks her to run, she says, ''I certainly didn't think, Well, of course this would happen. But neither did I think, What an astonishing idea. It seemed more comfortable than that, a natural progression.'' Wait a minute: Moving swiftly from mayor of Wasilla to governor of Alaska to Vice President of the United States is a natural progression? I'm sure I'm not alone in thinking that Palin owes readers a little more than that. Yet maybe that's naive of me. Palin has just done what almost all politicians do — delivered a mediocre, unsurprising, self-serving memoir.

Lurking behind the moaning and groaning, of course, is a sense of grievance. There’s no question the lady can hold a grudge. Were she ever to be elected to the highest office, after the first playing of "Hail to the Beef," her enemies might duck and run.

Or maybe not.

She can shoot, but the problem has always been, she can’t aim.

Her hymns to the outdoors are the textual equivalent of Thomas Kinkade paintings. Her tales of family life? Sticky sweet as a Cinnabon. The contrast between family and the people, and politics and the press, becomes more stark as the campaign tumbles into the crapper. McCain's “experts” do something Sarah cannot abide, and then a call from Track in Iraq, or quip from Piper, gives her strength to carry on.

The evil McCain operatives smoke and swear and scheme. They will not let her talk about Obama pallin' around with terrorists. They will not let her see the people. They will not let her try to save Michigan. She cannot even jog. Those elitists sold her a bill of goods. They were never going to let Sarah be Sarah! There was nowhere else to go but rogue.