Australia: Palin quits

The Sydney Morning Herald

Only way was down as Palin traded credibility for cash
Ed Pilkington
October 8, 2011

Sarah Palin has always been a political maverick. So is this really the final curtain for the Tea Party favourite, asks Ed Pilkington.

It all started with a cruise. In June 2007, a couple of prominent conservative magazines, The Weekly Standard and the National Review, took their pundits and loyal readers on a jaunt to Alaska. Docking at the state capital of Juneau, they were invited to lunch at the governor's mansion by its then occupant - the little-known politician Sarah Palin.

''Everyone came away thinking she was a fresh face we might hear more from,'' recalls one of her guests, the editor of the National Review, Rich Lowry.

The thought proved to be an underestimate of monumental proportions. Soon after the cruise, The Weekly Standard ran an article headlined ''The Most Popular Governor'', followed by a stream of glowing coverage that would bring Palin to the attention of the 2008 Republican presidential candidate, John McCain. The rest, as they say in Wasilla, was history.
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Some 1133 days after Palin was announced as McCain's running mate for the White House, the extraordinary Palin TV soap opera finally came to an end this week - at least in its current presidential season. ''When we serve, we devote ourselves to God, family and country,'' Palin said, announcing her decision not to stand for the 2012 nomination on Wednesday night.

The grip she continues to hold on the imagination of conservative Americans was shown by the instant outpouring of disappointment and bewilderment among her followers. ''Are you sure you don't want to change your mind?'' bemoaned one commenter from among her 3.2 million Facebook friends.

There was some anger too, expressed on supporters' websites such as Conservatives4Palin. One fan posted he felt ''dissed at the altar''. Another said: ''Everything builds to a crescendo then, phffft.''

That sense of Palin having raised right-wing hopes only to dash them is understandable, if misguided. Few close observers of American politics have taken a Palin run on the White House seriously for several months now. In retrospect, many now see her resignation as governor of Alaska in July 2009 as the beginning of her political end.

''She had a fork in the road - to continue a conventional political career or embrace her celebrity star power,'' Lowry says. ''It was an understandable decision but it made it more difficult for her to run for president.''

Nick Broomfield, the documentary film-maker whose profile of Palin - You Betcha! - has just opened in US cinemas, believes that by quitting the governor's office Palin was also forced drastically to change her political direction. ''She is a true populist and a maverick, but when she left the post the only place she had to roost was crazily to the right.''

As he researched Palin's earlier political career, Broomfield was struck by how big government and bipartisan she was. As mayor of Wasilla in the late 1990s she built a large sports complex that proved to be a typically popular innovation but left the tiny town in which she still lives heavily in deficit. Then as governor she made the radical move of raising taxes for oil companies - another highly populist decision that earned her the support of Democrats and the ire of her own party.

''If she'd stuck to that kind of maverick stuff she could have been a very interesting politician. Instead, she's become an enormously polarising force,'' Broomfield says.

The polarisation began with her embrace of the Tea Party movement that was already a national force by the time she stood down as Alaskan governor. Her hockey-mum style and folksiness played perfectly with the Tea Partiers looking for an alternative to Washington elites.

Amy Kremer, who as an organiser of the Tea Party Express has shared platforms at many rallies with Palin across the country, says: ''She's your everyday average citizen who believes in America … She's got grit, she's tough as nails and prepared to fight for her cause.'' The salmon-fishing and moose-huntin' Republican was also a winning formula on TV, in books and on social media. She earned millions for herself through her Fox TV contract and her two books, Going Rogue and America by Heart. She also earned fame and fortune for those around her through the creation of a Palin brand.

The beneficiaries include Palin's daughter - the Dancing with the Stars sensation Bristol - as well as Bristol's kissing-and-telling former boyfriend Levi Johnston; Palin's husband and former ''first dude'' Todd; Tina Fey whose Saturday Night Live impersonation of Palin went viral; and the authors and directors of a library full of Palin books and films - adoring and scathing in equal measure.

But what she and her immediate circle have gained in cash and celebrity, Palin has suffered in political credibility. Her increasingly right-wing political posturing has continued to endear her to the Tea Party margins but has lost her any hope of speaking to the more nuanced middle ground.

The nadir came in January when she placed a sniper's crosshairs on a map over Gabrielle Giffords's name shortly before the congresswoman was shot in the Tucson rampage. Palin compounded the problem by refusing to apologise and accusing journalists who criticised her of ''blood libel''. That wasn't the posturing of a future president and this week's announcement is merely confirmation after the event.

So is that the last we'll hear of the wonder of Wasilla? Nothing surprises any more with Palin but the safe money says don't count on it.

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