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Count me underwhelmed by Sarah Palin, or, to be specific, the person Sarah Palin has become. Or, to be even more specific, the person Sarah Palin became to be interviewed on Oprah about her book yesterday morning.
As one of her very first supporters (seriously, I'm on the record as hoping and wishing for her Vice Presidential nomination back in February of 2008, even before the Weekly Standard), I can't say I'm in love with where she's ended up. Sure, she's a fabulous populist, a snappy dresser with a lot of attitude, and she has the right personality to drive her career well into the future with or without a political run (she told Oprah she hasn't ruled out the possibility of a daytime chat show), but I suspect I'm confused as to where the Sarah I believed in seems to have gone.
She just so...so...um...sigh. The Anchoress explains
It was like watching two lightly muzzled Doberman Pinschers, behaving because they have to, but with an undergrowl that translates, roughly, into “if we’re ever alone together in the yard, you’re going down…”
Oprah needed Palin for the ratings; Palin needed Oprah to push the book, Going Rogue; An American Life. Both endured hour of excruciating discomfort for the sake of their respective ends.
For Oprah, that "end" was a reclamation of a moderate image. Despite what good intentions she had entering into the political fray in the middle of the election cycle last year, her decision to back Barack Obama cost her the allegiance of millions of conservative viewers. Although I didn't quite believe she had conservative viewers before last summer, I have to say the sudden downturn in Oprah's influence has been astounding. I appreciate, though, that Oprah is expanding her horizons, honoring her committment and being impressively honest about what happened. And, to be honest, I appreciate that she conducted a good, if pretty basic, interview.
Palin, on the other hand, seemed like a less-than-perfect copy of the refreshingly honest, unabashedly conservative and practical, populist politician I'd come to know and love. The attitude that made her famous is still there - when allowed, she knows what to say and how to say it - as is her personality and uniquely American style (I couldn't help but sort of love that trashy-fabulous piece of fake hair on the crown of her head). And her kind innocence and pragmatic realism is still there; when she speaks of chopping wood, being separated from her husband for months at a time as he worked blue-collar jobs in the North Slope oil rigs and on crab-fishing vessels, her touching, accessible stories about discovering her son Trig had Downs's Syndrom, she seems like the same kind of person I knew grewing up in the auto-industry employed towns of southeast Michigan.
There's a reason she inspires millions of Americans without being perfectly qualified for a high-level Federal job: she's just like millions of Americans, and that reason is in the stories she tells. While I'm not keen on reinforcing Sarah's overused victim mentality (we'll get to that in a minute), I have to admit that the McCain campaign really screwed up by not allowing her to speak from her heart. On Oprah, she said the kinds of things I wished I'd heard from her so often during the campaign - that her experience with her Downs Syndrome child was real and that it colored her political position on abortion, how finding out Bristol was pregnant was not a happy moment for her family but one that wounded them to the core, taught them important lessons and brought them back to reality and how the campaign utterly failed in letting her share her experience when the pregnancy was revealed to the nation. Had she only had the chance to be free of the leash, I honestly believe most of the country would have a much different opinion of her, and perhaps, she wouldn't be suffering from the perpetual victimhood which makes up her most significant public flaw (heck, even my stridently progressive in-laws were charmed).
It makes sense to build that image into a personal brand. Americans, for all their claims of highbrow political beliefs, vote on personality, not substance. If she plans on ever running for office again, if Obama is any indication, it will matter much more how she appeared in the media and how she makes people feel than how she plans
