Palin’s next move? Follow the metaphors

Image by smiteme via Flickr

Media has made its usual mistake of following the money, rather than the metaphors, in understanding why Palin is writing her “memoir.”

Will she get $11 million, they ask?  Will she get as much as Oliver North?   Though she may need every dime of the advance to deal with ethics violations and other unfolding events,  it’s not about the money.  It’s about how she can still win political hearts and minds in time for 2012.

Removing herself from office, whether voluntarily or in direct response to ethicsgate and e-mailgate, is Palin’s chance to reach the American public on her own terms.   “The idea,” she says about the book, ” is to focus on the content of the book and what’s coming in terms of me being able to tell my story unrestrained and unfiltered.”

Wittingly or unwittingly, she has put into motion an  immense strategy.  She couldn’t beat the media, so she joined them.  Simultaneously, she inspires her following and perhaps new constituencies with the power of the outsider who tells her own story, her own way, on her own terms.   The book has a publisher for each side of the aisle — HarperCollins for that New York urban elite imprimatur, and Zondervan, perhaps with a different cover and an extra chapter on faith, for those devoted Alaskans and rural believers.  And maybe she did get that $11 million advance to boot.  Look out, John Wayne.  You’ve met your real-life frontier match.

And the media already actually agree that Palin is determined to tell her story her own way, and that she has a certain talent for picking up the raw signals of her constituency early.  They say it, for the most part, with great vitriol and not a little drama, but it’s the key to the metaphor that keeps turning up in her remarks and in the remarks of her party and following — the art of working from the “outside.”

Has Palin decided go outside government to reappear in government, come 2012, on her own terms?  Consider this.  Her book will take about 18 months to write and publish.  That means it will appear one year before the 2012 election, exactly when it should hit the campaign trail.  It will serve as a major piece of her “record” just as she will be thrust into the public eye on the basis of her “record.”

So why not create a record you can completely control and corroborate, one in which your entire political record is laid out in flowing, vetted prose rather than the sort of disjointed speech we heard today?  Even better, with the book comes the ancillary blogs, television shows or appearances, and book tours to towns across America, urban and rural, all paid for by HarperCollins PR.

Palin on the “outside,” with her “outside” people, can galvanize her constitutencies and put forward her platform and get paid for it.  And she can launch the cult of the “outside” advocate.

The word “outside” turns up in Palin’s announcement today three or four times, as it has been turning up elsewhere  in the ruminations by the GOP about themselves, and life after Bush.

Here’s politico’s Michael Calderone from November 2008:

Since the Weekly Standard launched in 1995, there’s one scenario the conservative magazine hasn’t yet faced: Democrats in control of both the White House and Congress.   But that’s what lies ahead in just two months, leaving staffers there and at other media outlets on the right bracing for a period on the outside looking in.

And from Palin’s announcement today:

My choice is to take a stand and effect change and not just hit our head against the wall and watch valuable state time and money, millions of your dollars, go down the drain in this new political environment. Rather we know we can effect positive change outside government at this moment in time, on another scale, and actually make a difference for our priorities — and so we will, for Alaskans and for Americans.

And this:

And finally I polled the most important people in my life, my kids, where the count was unanimous. Well, in response to asking: “Do you want me to make a positive difference and fight for all our children’s future from outside the governor’s office?”

And this:

Now, despite this, I sure don’t want anyone, any Alaskan dissuaded from entering politics after seeing this real climate change that began in August. No, we need hardworking, average Americans fighting for what’s right. And I will support you because we need you and you can effect change, and I can too on the outside.

Here’s Calderone’s November 2008 politico post again, quoting the NY Times‘ Sam Tanenhaus on how conservatives and Republicans fare on the outside:

The New York Times’ Sam Tanenhaus, who edits The Book Review and the Week in Review section, and is writing a biography of National Review founder William F. Buckley, said that the conservative movement “has always been most fertile when excluded from power.”

“The conservative movement originated as an insurgency, and over time it became attached to the Republican Party,” Tanenhaus said. “It ceased to be a hotbed of ideas, and was more about the tactics and strategies of winning elections.”

Sarah Palin has, wittingly or unwittingly, put that observation to work for her future candidacy.

via Palin signs deal for memoir to be published in 2010: Gov. Sarah Palin | adn.com.