Sarah Palin: whiner-in-chief

Alex Spillius

Last updated: November 19th, 2009

Sarah Palin’s autobiography is, like the woman herself, bright and breezy and entertaining, notwithstanding some over-involved passages about Alaskan politics.

The 400-page ghost-written tome is commendably loyal to the former governor’s chirpy, informal voice.

With Palin, what you see is what you get, and what you see in Going Rogue is a woman who is charming, passionate, loyal and patriotic. She is also self-absorbed beyond political norms, prickly, thin-skinned and just plain whiny.

This is what stands out for me. Nothing is her fault – beyond an admission that she let herself get rattled by Katie Couric’s line of questioning. The book at heart is an indulgent complaint about her treatment by the press and by John McCain’s aides.

Other people have fact-checked her claims thoroughly, such as Shushanah Walshe, co-author of Sarah from Alaska, an entertaining – and balanced – account of Palin’s meteoric rise.

Undoubtedly, she is justified in complaining about the blogosphere’s treatment of her children, the Trig Truther nonsense, the divorce rumours and the myriad of FOIAs and ethics complaints that mired her Juneau staff in unnecessary paperwork.

But whatever the various rights and wrongs of various issues and incidents, the petty score-settling that Palin is unable to resist would be unbecoming of a high school brat, let alone someone who still, it seems, aspires to the White House.

No one really knows what path Palin’s ambition will take her on; perhaps even she doesn’t know. The book reveals that her own son urged her not to quit as governor because she needed to stand up and fight. But quit she did.

Going Rogue has affirmed one fact: she is not tough enough for presidential politics.