Sarah from Alaska: The Sudden Rise and Brutal Education of a New Conservative Superstar
By Scott Conroy and Shushannah Walshe
Hardback, 320 pages, $26.95
Public Affairs: New York
November 2009
'Tis the season for campaign books aimed at political junkies as the holidays ramp up. Reporters and campaign staff (and, famously, a certain roguish candidate) have used the past year to assimilate the historic 2008 election and prepare accounts of what it all meant and what went on behind the scenes. One of the first to make it out of the gate is Sarah from Alaska, penned by campaign reporters Scott Conroy and Shushannah Walshe, of CBS and Fox, respectively, who were assigned to cover the Alaskan governor on a day-to-day basis on the campaign trail.
The book opens on Election Night in Arizona, with a gripping account of Palin's insistence on delivering a speech despite John McCain's objections. The back-and-forth between the campaign staff members, the feigned ignorance of Palin, the mixture of crossed signals, anxiety and defeat are all captured by the authors in a riveting section that encapsulates so much of the Palin phenomenon in all its brazen glory:
As confusion continued to mount, Palin's deputy chief of staff, Chris Edwards, another Bush veteran, sprinted across the stage toward the teleprompter with a flash drive containing the governor's speech. There, he ran into Steve Schmidt, who reiterated the decision he had already relayed to Palin. No, Schmidt told Edwards, Palin would not be allowed to speak. Not realizing that the governor had alrady been informed of McCain's decision, Edwards concluded that the game had gone on long enough and that he should be the one to break the news to his boss. He caught up with Palin on her way to the holding area backstage and told her what Schmidt had just relayed to him. She again did not let on that she had already heard the news from Schmidt. Perhaps she was hoping that if she could prolong the uncertainty for long enough, she would be able to go ahead with the speech. After all, in this campaign, it had always seemed that no decision was ever really "final."
The authors recount the blow-by-blow of this final contretemps of campaign season, which was finished off with a fitting flourish: After John McCain leaves the scene and the cameras and reporters begin to break down their equipment and leave, Palin sweeps onto the stage, extended family in tow, for a final photograph. As the confused press begins to mill around the chum of a scene she's tossed them, McCain staffers can take no more. The lights are turned off and the campaign is truly and officially over.
Sarah Palin is a woman who simply will not be cheated out of more than her fair share of the wattage of whatever limelight is shining, and given the leaks, lies and refutations about the content of her own book, it's probably best for readers interested in Palinology to take hold of a more disinterested volume before diving into Going Rogue head first. Conroy's and Walshe's book would seem to be a bracing pre-read that doesn't hesitate to outline her flaws while still keeping sight of the personality that appealed to the right-wing white base. She's not a caricature in this account, even if she still ends up as something of an enigma.
The interesting truth is, her concession speech, as presented in this book, was actually quite gracious, both as wishing well to the new commander-in-chief and as a salute to the man with whom she shared the ticket (and often overshadowed):
I wish Barack Obama well as the 44th president of the United States. If he governs America with the skill and grace we have often seen in him, and the greatness of which he is capable, we're gonna be just fine. And when a black citizen prepares to fill the office of Washington and Lincoln, that is a shining moment in our history that can be lost on no one....
It would be a happier night if elections were a test of valor and merit alone, but that is not for us to question now. Enough to say it has been the honor of a lifetime to fight at the side of John S. McCain.
Such scoopish tidbits like the never-heard speech are planted throughout Sarah from Alaska. Readers can learn more about the exorbitant wardrobe purchases, staff firings in Alaska, the clandestine arrangements to bring her to McCain for her initial interview, staff reactions to the Charles Gibson and Katie Couric interviews, and backbiting and intrigue that began early on between the McCain and Palin campaign staffs. But the book suffers from an unexpected distance from the subject at hand, considering the two authors were part of the campaign press entourage of the vice-presidential candidate: Palin basically boycotted her press pool, even when they were on the same plane. She went to such absurd lengths that her avoidance becomes a major part of the story that unfolds in the book.
"We go into today with a candidate who's got, on background, enormous clarity and action versus a candidate of contemplation and confusion," the aide said. The insistence that this entirely useless statement be kept on background (meaning that it could not be attributed) would have been laughable had it not been uttered so earnestly.
The upshot of such ridiculous message control and withholding of access to the candidate is that Sarah from Alaska, as interesting an account as it is, is noticeably impoverished. The opening Election Night scenes are the best in the book, and the authors were smart to lead with their strongest hook in the opening pages of the introduction. Once the book gets underway, a chronological approach is taken, and it becomes apparent who would speak to the authors and who would not by the depth of detail given to one stage of Palin's life or another. Her basketball career in high school gets pages and pages of treatment, complete with direct quotes from her coaches and teammates, while her more intriguing years of flitting from one college to another (four in all), get hardly any treatment at all. Such uneven coverage is packaged by trying to show basketball Palin (Sarah Heath back then, pre-Todd) as a scrapper with some natural talent boosted by a work ethic but not the star of the team; these traits, it's implied, are the same that take her to the VP candidacy via the Alaskan governorship, but it's still glossing over the missing parts of her life.
Interestingly, the most telling quote in the book may be regarding those barely touched-on college years, when the authors succeed in getting Palin's father, Chuck Heath, on record, talking about why he thinks his daughter quit the University of Hawaii at Hilo:
According to Chuck, Sarah's decision to join her high school friend in transferring out of the school had to do with being outside her comfort zone for the first time in her life in an environment dominated by Asians and Pacific Islanders. "It just wasn't exactly what they expected," he says. "They were a minority type thing and it wasn't glamorous, so she came home."
This observation, not played up at all by the authors, seems more significant than all of the basketball game coverage that came previously. Yes, Palin out of her comfort zone and experiencing life as a non-glamorous minority leads her to quitting a college. It doesn't take flashy neon arrows and a sign pointing to the capital of Alaska to draw a political parallel.
Other areas of her life that could have used more elaboration are her years before running for mayor, when she was entering beauty pageants, starting a family and having a political awakening. It's also clear that her Christianity is real and not assumed, and a deeper exploration of the overlap there between her politics and her church life would have been welcomed, but considering the limitations of access they had and the quick turnaround time of the book, Sarah from Alaska is a good introduction to the Palin industry that seems to be barreling our way with the release of Going Rogue. The authors are able to paint her in more depth than mere news accounts have allowed, and she comes across as contradictory, ambitious, paranoid and unpredictable, but also warm, sentimental, dogged and not nearly as vapid as she appeared on the national scene.
It's not the past, of course, that will interest most readers at this point. It's the future. And here, the two journalists have clearly thought through the phenomenon they were able to witness first-hand in 2008:
Though she has not stated so explicitly, it seems clear that she harbors aspirations of becoming president of the United States. Given her unwavering answer to John McCain's stunning offer to be his running mate, her postcampaign interviews in which she was remarkably frank about crashing through any "open doors" to the presidency, and the steps she has since taken to sustain her national profile after her resignation, no clearheaded assessment could conclude otherwise. Palin's lofty ambition is unlikely to subside, and she is now essentially free to campaign as a full-time job in advance of the official start of the 2012 race. Having thrown off the shackles of a position that would have required a full day of travel to get her to most places in the continental United States, she can now make frequent jaunts to early-voting states and congressional districts where there are Republican friends to be made. Despite polls that have shown her overall support taking a downward turn, Palin's resignation amid the perception that nefarious forces chased her out seemed only to strengthen support for her among the white evangelical conservative base that holds a disproportionate sway over the Republican primary process.
Sarah Palin, whether she winds up in the primaries or not, is clearly at Ground Zero in the battle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party. Sarah from Alaska opens the door for a deeper look at her ideology, her path to power, and her version of herself as no-nonsense streetfighter who is also some sort of a victim of the modern media environment and coastal liberal snobs. Holding such contradictions together in the package of one person seems impossible, but for now she's pulling it off. Just as Republicans are hoping they can, as a party.