NOVEMBER 16, 2009
Her Side Of the Story
By MELANIE KIRKPATRICK
'Going Rogue," the title of Sarah Palin's autobiography, refers to the snide remark of an anonymous McCain aide late in last year's presidential campaign. It was used to describe the vice-presidential candidate's move to break free of her media handlers and speak out against the campaign's decision to pull out of Michigan, a state that, in Mrs. Palin's view, was well worth contesting. The "word came hurtling down that I had been 'off-script,' " she writes. The campaign hadn't bothered to inform her of the Michigan decision, which she learned of from a reporter. "Of course," she adds drily, "it's pretty easy to issue candid, off-script messages when there is no script to begin with." One of the biggest mistakes of the failed McCain campaign — and there was no shortage of them — was its handling of Mrs. Palin. Her criticisms of the campaign's treatment of her appear prominently in "Going Rogue." But the book contains self-criticisms too, if not as many as there ought to be for a candidate who was ultimately responsible for her own uneven performance. That said, "Going Rogue" is more a personal memoir than a political one. More than half the book is about Mrs. Palin's life before the 2008 campaign.
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But of course it is for details of the McCain campaign that many readers will pick up "Going Rogue," and Mrs. Palin will not disappoint them. She describes in particular how campaign aides muzzled her and mismanaged her family. If anything, she is too gentle on the staffers who kept her out of the loop and under wraps. She is certainly too gentle on the man at the top of the ticket who let them get away with it. She has hardly a critical word to say about John McCain, whose appearances in the book are surprisingly few. The mistakes started on day one. The McCain communications team had not compiled the usual press-briefing guides, she writes, with the result that the national media had "zero information" on her or her record in Alaska. Moreover, her "family, friends, and political associates were under strict instructions not to talk to the media." She wasn't even allowed to speak to her home-state press, which was very friendly. When one of her aides asked McCain headquarters for permission for her to go to the rear of the campaign plane to talk to reporters, the response was swift: "No! Absolutely not—block her if she tries to go back."
She says that the campaign stiffed her for $50,000 in vetting expenses. She expresses perplexity at the focus of McCain aides on her clothes — "Never before had I been involved in a campaign that placed such an emphasis on packaging." And she is angry about the campaign's handling of her daughter's out-of-wedlock pregnancy, which included putting out a press release that Mrs. Palin had not seen or approved. "If they
weren't going to let me speak my heart and mind even about an intimate issue affecting my own family, what would they let me speak to?"
When the media blackout was finally lifted and she had an interview with Katie Couric of the "CBS Evening News," the result was disastrous. Mrs. Palin takes responsibility, saying that she "let the team down" and that she "mistakenly let myself become annoyed and frustrated with many of her repetitive, biased questions." But she also blames the campaign for not prepping her adequately and for telling her that it was going to be "a pretty mellow interview, short and sweet, about balancing motherhood and my life as governor." It is disappointing that Mrs. Palin devotes so little of "Going Rogue" to the issues that she and Mr. McCain ran on. She says that the campaign should have focused more on the flagging economy and been more aggressive in countering Barack Obama's agenda. She also says that she wasn't allowed to praise President Bush's homeland-security policies. But that's about it.
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"Going Rogue" offers little guidance on the big question: Is Mrs. Palin preparing to run for the presidency? The final chapter, "The Way Forward," is a mere 13 pages and reads like a stump speech. It consists mostly of generalities on conservative values, fiscal restraint and the need for a strong defense. But the quotation from her father with which she introduces the chapter perhaps offers a clue to her future plans: "Sarah's not retreating; she's reloading!"
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748704431804574537882681089404.html
—Ms. Kirkpatrick is a former deputy editor of the Journal's editorial page.Printed in The Wall Street Journal, page A21
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