Sarah Palin's back

Sir Tokyo Sexwale · November 17, 2009

oh look - she has a book out next week. f***ing nause

Anyone seeking clues as to whether Sarah Palin plans to run for US president in 2012 should consider the quotation from her father, Charles Heath, that she uses to introduce the final chapter of her new book, Going Rogue. "She's not retreating," he says. "She's reloading!"

This week America will resound to the deafening roar of automatic rifle fire being discharged by Palin across its airwaves. The first volley was let off today in the form of an hour-long interview with Oprah Winfrey.

Ed Pilkington on Sarah Palin's appearance on Oprah Link to this audio Tomorrow morning will open with a round of sniper fire that will rattle on through the week: a multi-part conversation with the doyenne of television interviewers, ABC News's Barbara Walters.

Then, on Thursday the heavy artillery will be rolled on to the battlefields of small-town America when Palin takes her campaign bus – correction: book tour – to such iconic heartland destinations as Grand Rapids, Michigan; Noblesville, Indiana; and Cincinnati, Ohio.

That's a great deal of munitions for someone content to rest on her laurels at home in Wasilla, Alaska (population 9,000).

So was Palin reloading for the next presidential race in 2012, Oprah Winfrey asked her, getting straight to it. "I'm concentrating on 2010, making sure we have the issues tackled for all Americans," was Palin's non-reply.

"But would you have told me even if you were thinking of it," hit back Winfrey. "No, I wouldn't." So that's clear then.

"I can't wait to see you!" Palin tells her 990,198 Facebook supporters, exhorting them to turn up at her book signings. Such a folksy approach suffuses the book, which hits the shops today, from the dedication on the first page: "To Patriots – who love the USA as much as I do."

The former governor of Alaska and mayor of Wasilla adopted the same touchy-feely tone in her engagement with Winfrey, a media event that had the potential to be spikey, given Winfrey's highly public backing for Barack Obama in last year's US presidential election.

But Palin was full of magnanimity, even for the very hostile Levi Johnston, the father of her grandchild, who has been letting off his own blast of publicity this week in an attempt to piggy-back some of the attention lavished on his once almost-mother-in-law.

Oh sure, Levi was welcome to come to Thanksgiving dinner, Palin told Winfrey. "He is a part of the family," she said, lamenting though that he had taken a path of what she called "aspiring porn" — a reference to his photo-shoot last week for Playgirl. "He's on a road that is not a healthy place to be. He's a teenager. I don't think he realises yet quite what he is being handled around."

To which the admirably gruff Johnston replied, courtesy of US Weekly: "She was full of it."

As she lays out her life story in 413 pages, Palin is profuse in her praise for two father figures who, she says, have been highly influential: Ronald Reagan and God. And if that isn't a political message honed expressly for the party faithful who will chose the 2012 Republican presidential candidate, what is?

Palin's magnanimity does not stretch, however, to John McCain's senior aides in the 2008 race, whom she blames for many of the disasters that befell her on the campaign trail. Much of the second half of the book is reserved for a character assassination of them, particularly McCain's chief strategist, the "grim-faced" and "cool" Steve Schmidt.

In Palin's rendition of history, the McCain camp refused to let her be herself, prevented her from having direct contact with the media and was obsessed with the way she "packaged" herself.

She even accuses Schmidt of trying to control her diet. "I'm a 44-year-old, healthy, athletic woman, raising five kids and governing a large state, I thought … But you've told me how to dress, what to say, who to talk to, a lot of people not to talk to, who my heroes are supposed to be, and we're still losing. Now you're going to tell me what to eat?"

Palin's salvos have not been without counter fire. The former McCain camp, clearly believing that offence is the best form of defence, has leaked a series of Palin emails to the Huffington Post. These give a somewhat different account of events.

In the book, for instance, Palin claims that McCain's advisers tried to dissuade her from appearing on the satirical show Saturday Night Live. Yet in one email Palin says she is "not thrilled" with the idea of going on the show, on the grounds that "these folks are whack – didn't know it was as bad as it is … what's the upside in giving them and their celebrity venue a ratings boost?"

In another email, sent to Schmidt and other aides shortly before the end of the campaign , she wrote: "I am very sorry. U guys are working double-triple time on this blundered-up stuff that they spin bc of my visits w press – while I apologise I say I love you guys!!!"

Sarah Palin is reloading. So are her enemies.

stressederic · November 17, 2009

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