Sarah Palin has freed herself from all restraint on her actions. Now unburdened of the tiresome duties Governor she can please herself. She can go where she wants, say what she wants, and do what she wants. She need not listen to any advice that she dislikes, and can arrange not be given any advice she dislikes. No McCain campaign handlers or Alaskan Cabinet officers to challenge her. No state senators with whom she must negotiate. No voters to appease. She can act entirely on her own judgment. This could get very scary.
A lucky few have an internal compass that guides them to great thoughts and great deeds against all opposition, and history praises them. The vast majority of us rely on what we are taught, on what we learn through experience, and on the reactions of those around us. We come up with a good idea and our associates reward us with praise and agreement. We come up with a bad idea and they criticize it. Most of us live life this way and strike a balance between blind social conformity and uncaring individual gratification. Some surround themselves with like-thinkers as wrong as they are (think Jim Jones in Guiana) or patronizing sycophants (think Elvis and Michael) and, without any correction to their compass, they daily drift further from reality. An unlucky handful of true monsters (think B-T-K Killer) find no value in other people's very lives, never mind in their social feedback.
In Sarah Palin we see someone unusually narcissistic, even for a public figure who seeks the limelight. I've never met her and would never try to diagnose someone at a distance. Yet she is certainly not crazy, and I doubt anyone could say she has a narcissistic personality disorder. She seems far too successful in all aspects of her life for that to be the case. Yet her exaggerated sense of her own worth, her indifference to the rights and feelings of others, her denial of unpleasant realities, her fondness for trivial lies easily disproved, her nonchalant self-pride, and her intemperate rage against anyone who challenges her self-appraisal suggest to me that 'narcissistic' is a useful adjective for describing her.
Such a person might show some tendencies towards "a careless regard for personal integrity...indifference to the rights of others...self-glorifying fantasies of success...a sense of high self-worth despite being seen by others as egotistic, inconsiderate, and arrogant...alibis [that] place oneself in the best possible light...[creation of] an inner world in which conflicts are dismissed...a general air of nonchalance...except when narcissistic self-confidence is shaken, at which time either rage, shame, or emptiness are briefly displayed." (Millon & Davis, 1998).
Over the next three years we will see what happens when such a person is hit hard in the uncaring world of bare-knuckles politics. What happens when the Beltway elite dismiss her with contempt? What happens when opponents attack her, lie about her, sabotage her? How many more ill-advised attacks will she make? How many shocking statements? How many rambling, incomprehensible remarks? How many vicious lies to defend her vulnerable self-worth? How much violence will she preach?
Will she soldier on with Jimmy Carter's grit and win an improbable outsider's victory? Will she accept a team of savvy handlers and win as the front man of a hidden team, like Reagan and Bush II? Or will she melt down into increasingly bizarre, self-pitying attacks on everyone outside the small circle of her family and friends? That is what I think we will see, and it will be painful to watch.
PS: I have a PhD in clinical psychology so, for better or worse, I do have at least a nodding acquaintance with these terms, though that doesn't excuse my undoubted ignorance.
Millon, T. & Davis, R.D. (1998). Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory (MCMI-III). In G.P. Koocher, J.C. Norcross, & S.S. Hill (Eds.), Psychologists' Desk Reference (142-148). New York: Oxford University Press.
Those authors, of course, said nothing about Governor Palin.