Palin goes broken arrow, gives ‘hard cover’ new meaning

Says Sarah Palin, civilian:

Instead of supporting [a ban] . . . I just stopped going to the restaurant. It eventually went smoke-free on its own, which is the way things like that should work.

The former governor of Alaska’s autobiography Going Rogue: An American Life is already a bestseller. It’s being called everything from “fiction” to “desperate” – and that’s among her own party, including McCain 2008 strategist Steve Schmidt.

That’s all very well.

But how does the book actually fare? The fascination for what’s been written (by Palin and her ghostwriter Lynn Vincent, editor for the evangelical World Magazine) has capsized the text’s overall impact. Who cares that the Democrats are pointing their fingers and fleering? And if the McCain/Palin ticket was a curdled omelet, the sooner Palin discovers that she’s not breaking any eggs with her shopping list of condemnation, but that she is, in fact, a shattered and expended shell of a politician, the better.

With Going Rogue, it would seem Palin is gunning for earnest comeuppance. It’s sprinkled with some tangy criticisms (that read like the “someday they’ll get theirs” bully bashing chapter in a child’s day journal) amid the flotsam of puerile politicking. Her book tends to block, deflect and put a hard cover on her detractors and former colleagues, as well as the personal and political trials and errors that all candidates endure. It tends to come across both puffed up and perfunctory. And Palin’s (and/or Vincent’s) prose has a habit of jerking away from the political trail and benching us in queasy revengelical harangues:

From the beginning, Nicolle [Wallace] pushed for Katie Couric and the CBS Evening News . . . Nicolle had left her gig at CBS just a few months earlier to hook up with the McCain campaign. I had to trust her experience, as she had dealt with national politics more than I had. But something always struck me as peculiar about the way she recalled her days in the White House, when she was speaking on behalf of President George W. Bush. She didn’t have much to say that was positive about her former boss or the job in general . . . Nicolle went on to explain that Katie really needed a career boost. ‘She just has such low self-esteem,’ Nicolle said. She added that Katie was going through a tough time . . . I was thinking, And this has to do with John McCain’s campaign how?

In addition, Going Rogue offers lumpy theatrics that would suggest Palin’s rise and fall could have been something out of Frank Capra’s filmography:

It seemed that true public service, crafting policies that were good for the people, had become increasingly derailed by politics and its infernal machines. But I had a drive to help, an interest in government and current events since I was a little kid, and I had become aware of the impact of common sense public policy during the presidency of Ronald Reagan. I was intrigued by political science in college and studied journalism because of my passion for the power of words. And I had been raised to believe that in America, anyone can make a difference.

Voters disagreed with Sarah Palin’s platform (such that it was) but didn’t seem particularly bothered by it. But readers may be less kind. Is Going Rogue: An American Life a tale of hate, spite and malice? Is it a clarion call for a potential Palin 2012 campaign? Is it a memoir? Not really, to any of the aforementioned. Will it make the magic millions of dollars Palin seems to want more than anything else at this point in time? You betcha.

You don’t have to take my word for it; take her sentiments.

Instead of supporting John McCain’s pick for vice president, and by extension, his possible administration, the majority of American voters just stopped going to that restaurant. Which, as Sarah Palin (understudied by Lynn Vincent) purports, is the way things like that work.

The rest is history. But for a brief moment, it’s her story.