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 on, say, governing anything.

But the tough, cool exterior she exuded a few months ago wasn't really there any more. It was strange. Confronted with a body of work she could have explained away, she, as Melissa at Shakesville put it...um...*yawn.*

The show is a yawn-inducing puff piece. If anyone expected Winfrey to conduct an interview that would force Palin to account for any of the demonstrable untruths she's told about herself, they will certainly be disappointed. We are instead treated to images of Palin working out and taking care of her son Trig, and the conversation turns to trenchant subject matter such as her grandson's father, Levi Johnston. "I hear he goes by the name Ricky Hollywood now," says Palin, which might be a more withering aside had it not been delivered from the set of the Oprah Winfrey show.

There is obviously a lot of bitterness in Palin, but as Rod Dreher put it at Crunchy Con, there are only so many bitchy details about the McCain campaign and withering comments about Katie Couric's mainstream media anti-conservative bias before the idea that Sarah Palin is not responsible for any of her mis-steps starts to wear thin. By now, we know McCain sort of wanted to pin his loss on her. By now, we've figured out that Katie Couric wanted to make her look stupid, and that she was underprepared for a too-long and too-soon interview with the wrong network anchor. But by now, we want new stories. We want to move forward.

At every turn, Palin is a victim. At no time does she ever believe that she may have been partly responsible for not realizing sooner that the people she was trusting weren't on her side. Everything mis-step could have been corrected had only someone else stepped in, as evidenced by Joe Liberman's eleventh hour rescue of her Vice Presidential debate, and the her failed attempts to convince McCain's people that the half-truths circling around her head needed to be addressed. She's obviously strong, but she's struggling with some ideas about herself and politics that won't help her in the long run; I'm not entirely sure I'm ready to support another run at another office is she's not interested in applying the same tough-as-nails persona she brings to her speeches and image to the day-to-day operations of a political campaign.

Like Melissa Clouthier, who compared Sarah's interview on Oprah to her interview on Rush, I want Sarah to succeed. I don't want her to fail. I think she, her aggressive can-do attitude and refreshing honesty is absolutely necessary to the survival of the Republican party. Absolutely necessary. If there is no touchstone, no connection between lawmakers and the people they serve, if there's no hope that limited-government conservatives who haven't yet succumbed to the stagnet, putrid DC establishment still exist somewhere, somehow, the Republicans will suffer. But to succeed, she's going to need to grab the bull by the horns.

Sarah Palin must though, find a way to be at ease answering any question that the superficial, bigoted, condescending North Eastern blue bloods throw at her. Underneath, these people are insecure. It rattles them to their bones that a state college educated, wife, mother, politician and governor could best them. Their insecurity will get more piqued as President Obama continues to waffle, avoid and hide–from unfriendly press, from dictators, from tough decisions, from failure.

Sarah Palin will have to get used to wearing the mantle of leader. That means that she’ll have to own the fact that she’s so formidable that Barack Obama has finally, at long last, decided to man up and face Fox.

She sounds commanding when she's interviewed by friendlies. She had this months ago, and she showed a glimmer of it when, today, she was interviewed by Rush Limbaugh. She's just got to learn that, if she's serious about taking the reigns of the populist movement that's sweeping the country, she'll have to face down the enemy with every ounce of the same courage it took to deliver that first Vice Presidential speech at the Republican convention. Given the shot, she could really be something spectacular and someone beloved.

This is the beginning of a very interesting era in Sarah Palin's life and I'm anxious to see where it leads.