Rogue Thoughts: Chapter by Chapter on Sarah Palin

Introduction to the Project:

(This is a completed live blog. I have decided not to correct most typographical errors or “fix” it. Some was done as late as 3 AM as I finished the book, but I felt the authenticity of the moment generally better than a smoothed out version.)

I have defended Sarah Palin on numerous occasions against critics. I thought some conservatives turned on her too soon and that her executive experience outweighed any negatives known about her. I certainly did not think flubbing some interviews made her unfit to be a chief executive.

If one were to support a pol based on their enemies, no conservative Christian would vote for anyone other than Palin. The fact that Sarah Palin has a womb has apparently caused some critics such as Andrew Sullivan to lose their minds.

Over time, however, I have grown a bit disenchanted with Governor Palin. Nobody reasonable expects to like everything about a political figure . . . conservatives and Christians don’t put much trust in princes or princesses for that matter. Her inexplicable resignation as governor of Alaska years before her term ended should be difficult for even the most devoted Palinista. She has also not been much of a team player and it has been hard to discern a coherent pattern to her positions.

She appears driven more by personality than by philosophy in making policy decisions.

On the positive side she has mastered new media and shows awesome instincts in capturing the mood of parts of the nation in terse Facebook prose. I waited for her book Going Rogue with some interest as a window into her ideas and to address some of these concerns.

Even though I am a Romney guy, 2012 is too far away to have overly firm commitments if you are just a regular guy and not a Party apparatchik and Palin could persuade me.

This is a live chapter-by-chapter reaction as I read that book this weekend. It will follow my thoughts and so may not be particularly orderly or well written! You will notice that I may change my mind as the live reading progresses.

I took this book seriously, because I want to take Palin seriously.

I will post my final thoughts at the end of the review and as a separate post.

Chapter One

This is not a well written book so far. It is overly purple and reads like a parody of high prose. The good news is that it is not a fake book like Mike Huckabee’s dreadful post-election conflation of speeches, revenge, and random thoughts.

Still, this is a bad book up through chapter one.

Should Palin get the blame?

There are few things more irritating to the reader than the modern practice of ghost writing. How much of this book did Palin write? Is she responsible for the description of the Alaska state fair that I had to re-read twice just to grasp?

Palin did not invent the ghost written book, but she has not been well served by it so far. The adjectives in this book are the worst part: steely, plucky, scrappy.

Crappy.

The description of her childhood is like reading a grocery list. Everything is there, but it is hard to care. Her family life sounds warm, but the warmth can only be guessed at because she tells us rather than shows us that it is so.

The book is given to stating things as if we will know their truth by their merely being said.

Palin, the Monkees, and Plato

The most irritating thing about the book so far is Palin overreacting to critics. I once went to a Monkees concert scarred by the group insisting on showing how many instruments they could play. They were still upset about critics from the 1960s who said the boy band was fake!

Palin obviously was justifiably upset by accusations she is dim, but so far this book is not helping her case. She keeps describing herself as a reader and even named C.S. Lewis as a favorite writer, but so far there is no description of anything in a book that moved her and changed her life.

What Lewis does she like? Is the Lewis of That Hideous Strength or the Lewis of Til We Have Faces? Is she a fan of the Narnian Lewis or the argument in Abolition of Man? Did she poke the backs of closets when she was a kid?

We get none of this and so we are left wondering if she read books deeply or as a television substitute in the Alaska of her youth.

It is easy to see the difference when she talks about sports. She can describe in detail what she learned from running, but she never mentions what she learned from a book.  There are mentions of Pascal and Plato (!) in the first chapter, but they are referenced as sources of “thoughts” and not as a source for critical ideas or challenges to her life.

I don’t believe a pol has to read Plato for fun to be effective. God knows that many a liberal arts graduate has proven useless at doing things and that Palin has done more in her way than I ever will. Anybody from my home state of West Virginia knows scores of people whose common sense would serve us better in government than angst ridden college graduates whose very uncertainty leads them to believe that they alone should be our philosopher kings.

May Obama be our last president of that sort!

But the ridiculous use of quotes or “big ideas” from great writers that one does not really read or know should end as well. When Palin artlessly writes: “Plato said it well, ‘Be kind for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle,’” did she know the context of the quotation? Is it even in Plato? I cannot find it, don’t remember reading it,  and I suspect that it is spurious. Can someone give me a reference?

It looks like the sort of thing Google tells you Plato said, but where the reference is impossible to find.

I am willing to bet at this point that Plato never said it, but if he did I am even more willing to bet that Palin and her writer are quote mining. If Plato said such a thing, it was likely in the context of the battle of each man against his lower nature. For Plato the chief battle was the inner one, but Palin uses it to reference our need to sympathize for people’s physical pain and life torments.

It is hard to imagine the Socrates of Phaedo making such a statement. So even if Plato said it (and he wrote so much it is hard to be sure), I am guessing that the context is wrong.

Why do I care? Partly, this is a live blog of my reading and I am a Plato guy so you are stuck with reading what I am thinking, but mostly because I find this kind of misuse of Plato irritating. Why do it? What is gained? Why quote mine?

A Political Philosophy?

As for political ideas, Palin is apparently for things that have helped her and her family and against things that have harmed her or her family. She is a populist about oil spills (rightly I think), because it impacts her state, but otherwise is sunny about big business.

If I read the chapter right, the only bad big business, oil, is bad because Palin has experienced its badness.

This may be uncharitable. Perhaps Palin is a default libertarian who will change her mind in particular instances when big business forces her to do so. In her world view business and business people are innocent until proven guilty.

If so, this is an appealing blend of populism and free markets. It would be nice, however, if Palin said this. Maybe she does later in the book as she spells out common-sense (or roguish!) conservatism.

Is Palin a Christian Existentialist? Sort of?

I am not enjoying this book so far. If I could hear Palin telling her stories about basketball and Alaska, I bet I would love it. She is a speaker and not a writer . . . I think I would like her more than I am liking this book. Perhaps I am just a snob . . . and want something more from Palin than I should.

What is bothering me about her tales of childhood? One thing I like about President Obama’s writing is that it is reflective. One thing I don’t like about President Obama’s writing is that it is too introspective as if every thought he ever had is worth scrutiny. One can imagine him debating why he likes arugula and what it says about self. Palin seems to be just the opposite.

I am hoping at some point she displays some introspection. Is it wrong to hope for some?

Am I now demonstrating the same self-indulgent introspection about introspection that I don’t like in Obama?

At least Palin has me thinking . . . though mostly about her not thinking.

The section on Todd and his family is generous and authentic. Sarah learned something from Todd’s diverse background and it shows. Her voice seems very present in this section. There is hope in this part of the book as it contains no slogans drawn from dimly remembered Reagan speeches.

She loves Alaska, loves the land, and hates people who wreck it. There is no doubt in my mind about any of those things and there are worse traits than these in a leader.

Are there two Sarahs? There is Sarah who is force fed policy speeches and Googles Plato quotes and then there is experiential Sarah who learns by doing.

I am wondering if Palin likes to read, but learns from actions. Perhaps, she would be better served by embracing this, but it also is open question whether this style of intellect is good in a leader of a republic. I am open to it.

This would explain how Sarah has used books and authors so far. She learns something from her experience or that of others and then finds the “smart person” to confirm her ideas of the world. Is she a Baconian politician seeking a covering philosophy for her real world experiences?

So far Sarah has been pretty easy on herself. She seems to be learning from other peoples sins more than her own.  What were her vices? Nerdiness? This strikes me as the equivalent of listing “works too hard” as a vice on a job application. She calls her nice guy husband a “jerk” for a high school indiscretion, but she has yet to mention ever being wrong herself  in any interesting way.

Mattering Most Of All

Palin writes: “hard work and passion matter most of all.”

This is not true. What if someone has bad ideas? What is an oil company executive works hard an dis passionate in his goal to despoil Alaska and make money? Is he good?

Of course, taking the prose this seriously makes me a clueless academic. This is the sort of thing people write and do not mean. They assume we know that it only applies to morally good people. I am not sure that is true at the higher level of politics, however.

One would not tell the leaders of Iran to work harder and be more passionate about their ideas.

Even in a generous context, however, the idea seems wrong. Palin’s account of her championship year is oddly Palincentric. So far people have appeared in her life and been described, but seem to exist as props in her story. Most likely this is the fault of the writing, but it presents her as self-absorbed.

She scored one point in a championship game, but we are led to believe her playing with pain somehow inspired the win. Who if anyone was the real hero of the game . . . the person with talent who made the baskets?

Talent, which Palin obviously has in abundance in many areas, seems at least as important as hard work and passion. If I had worked as hard as Palin, she would still have been a better athlete than I am, because I lack her gifts.

However, I do believe Palin, when she says she learned a great deal by winning the state basketball championship.

Palin and College

Palin is right to complain about snobbery regarding her college career.

She went to several schools, but seems to have done so to remain debt free. Just going to college and finishing was an accomplishment given that her social set would have accepted her without a college degree.

What does Palin report about college?

Her first year (in Hawaii) seems to have been mostly fun in the sun. It is hard to blame her for that and many of my students can report the same thing.

Her next years of college were (on her account) dominated intellectually by Reagan. As a person about Palin’s age, I can relate to that. She describes Reagan in familiar terms, but as political science major does not interact with Reagan and what she was learning in class.

Was her school so pro-Reagan that she did not have any conflicts? That was not my experience in either a Christian or a secular college. Reagan was controversial amongst most academics and was often treated with disrespect by my professors. Was this true of Palin’s?

Where are her professors?

What were her notable classes?

College appears to have been a “union card” for Palin as it is for so many of us middle-class kids. Other than her Dad and some coaches, she appears to have had no notable teachers.

It is a good reminder to college professors how little impact we have on our students. We are not nearly so important as we think . . . and it is hard not to believe that Idaho failed her. It certainly did not inspire her to mention anything she learned in class.

What exactly is the point of the big general education classes that Palin attended? Isn’t it safe to assume they have almost no lasting impact on most their students? College as a mere right of passage of this sort appears an incredible waste of opportunity.

Couldn’t Palin have gotten what it appears she received from an on-line college?

Palin as Hard Worker

Palin has worked hard.

That is a good thing and her hard work made a bigger impression on her than college. That too is not surprising given the education she was offered at the schools she attended.

Would McCain have picked her without the college degree? Isn’t it absurd that she spent five years earning something, a diploma, that impacted her so little and that we demand such a thing of our leaders?

If it impacts most of them so little, why?

A true sentence in this book: “I did what I had to do.”

I believe and admire Palin for this, because it is obviously true. Palin is (in the right sense) a self-made woman who had to sacrifice and work hard to make it.

We discount this kind of woman’s experience at our peril. Leaders can be born in many places and I see no reason that Palin’s choice to work a fishing boat to help her husband and son is not as formative as any other.

I hope she gets very rich from this book.

On Exxon

The first chapters closed with a description of the oil spill that rocked Alaska. Her justifiable wrath with ExxonMobile oil company is obvious.

Criticisms of Palin on this point have been overdone, in my opinion. It is coherent to think that oil should be drilled, but to be angry when bad practices by some oil companies harm Alaska. To think you should “drill baby drill” does not mean that all drillers are good.

Palin is more nuanced in this section than in any part of the book so far.

Perhaps her second chapter will continue this improvement as the book shifts more to politics.

Chapter Two

On Aristotle

Palin begins her second chapter with a quote from Aristotle. I think I must be going mad, but I cannot remember this quotation either. Where is it?

I cannot find a reference in any book I own . . . but then I am writing this as I read her book. Can someone help me? Did Aristotle say, ” Criticism is something we can avoid by saying nothing, doing nothing, being nothing?”

I want a reference to the text.

It is surely not possible that in less than one hundred pages that Palin got two ancient quotations wrong?

It is bad enough if they are used as motivational slogan writers, but couldn’t we at least get the philosopher right?

Maybe I am just having a memory failure. Can some Palinista deliver Sarah by pointing out the reference in the Philosopher’s work?

We have all been taken in my an urban legend. I once read (in a book!) that Alfred Wallace was a “lord” and got properly spanked for passing this piece of nonsense on, but I am beginning to worry about the fact checking in this book.

As Plato did not say, “Getting this sort of thing wrong too often and too quickly is hard on the soul of the reader.”

I strongly suspect that the ghostwriter Googled her way through ancient philosophy quotations. Learn from this students . . . the fact that someone says Aristotle said a thing does not mean that he did.

On Entering Politics

However random the first chapter seemed, the story of Palin’s entering politics is more readable and polished. She knows how she thinks about this era of her life.

Her rise as she tells it is appealing so far. I admire her willingness to raise taxes to pay for a local police department. That is why we render to Caesar!

Palin shows a strong libertarian streak in the chapter with government doing what it can at the edges. In this way, she really should read Aristotle, because he would defend (I think) her notion that politics is an art and not a science.

Palin is also strong when she argues against “old boy” networks in local politics. Who hasn’t faced that in his hometown?

The kind of experience that Palin gained as mayor strikes me as very valuable real world executive leadership. She actually had to do things and see the consequences. Wasilla is small and eccentric, but then so was ancient Athens!

You can learn a great deal by working in a place where everybody knows where you live. Weirdly, the political Palin is coming across as more authentic than the young Palin.

Stop the Quotes Now!

I am giving up trying to confirm Palin quotations, but the irritating habit suddenly saying: “I didn’t take to heart the words of Martin Luther King Jr.  . . . ” or some other quotable chap. Was Palin considering King’s words and refused to take them to hear?

Or is she retroactively thinking about them? Where did she find King’s words? Is she a King fan?

I predict that soon we will have a Teddy Roosevelt quote. I can also feel a G.K. Chesterton quotation coming . . . and Mother Theresa is usually good for citation.

Will Sarah let me down or will she quote mine these favorites soon?

This book is really disappointing.

On Being Wrong

Finally Palin admits to doing something bad (page 88) as she apologizes for refusing to back her mother-in-law in politics. This is a well written apology and she seems to have learned that personal connections and loyalty can be important than personal ambition.

This is a fine lesson within limits. She was right to worry about nepotism, but probably wrong to back some one other than her mother.

Palin values loyalty, but not at the cost of her ideals. This is a good thing.

Her resignation from the natural resources board is a story that has been told many times, but it is well told her. This is the Palin I admired and her discussion of the “end of her political career” is moving and strikes me as authentic.

The difference between her use of Jeremiah and the her inauthentic misuse of early quotation is revealing. She did the right thing, suffered for it (even if briefly), and it caused her to reevaluate her life.

Hopefully the rest of the book will continue in this manner.

The Book To Now

What do I think of “Our Sarah” (as some called her) up to this point in the book?

Palin learns by doing. She is highly energetic and fiercely loyal to her folks and family. She has mastered everything thrown at her by a total immersion strategy and by her ability to push harder than most people.

She has always been polarizing and she does not suffer fools gladly. She has been hurt a bit by media attacks on her education and intelligence, but has not reacted in a helpful manner to them.

Is she fit to be President? Perhaps, but I am concerned about her polarizing nature, her dark mood toward critics, and imprecision. Her confidence, energy, native intelligence, and leadership skills are impressive.

Palin has not been well served by this book so far as a book. As a money making and attention getting device it seems to be going very well, but the book is bad so far.

Of course if writing autobiography well were a mark of a great President, then U.S. Grant would have been our finest chief executive.

Something I Cannot Judge

Finally, Palin has faced discrimination in her career from being a woman, being physically attractive, being from Alaska, and being an Evangelical. However, she has reacted to this prejudices by becoming defensive.

This is understandable, justifiable, but will not serve her well in national politics. Rage about slights against self rarely go over well . . . and have caused her to harm her own cause at times however unfair this might be.

She is certainly entitled to her anger and her suspicions, but she might want to reexamine whether her preferred strategy for dealing with both has the outcome she wishes.

I am in no position to judge of course in most of these areas.

I am now taking a break from this blogging for a few hours.

Chapter Three

Palin runs and wins an election for governor in this chapter. The pace of this book reminds you of how young Palin really is for national life.

She truly is an outsider.

She hates “deals” and “power brokers.” Post-Obama and the Great Recession it would be foolish to dismiss this authentic rage. She sounds most herself when she hitting corrupt special interests that lock people out of decision making. She sounds least like herself when repeating 1980’s Republican bromides.

Palin is a populist of the heart, but too sensible to let her populism take her to the lunatic fringe. If she can verbally negotiate the tension in future speeches between Reaganism and populism, she will have found a winning electoral strategy.

Palin is No Theocrat

Palin’s unhinged critics keep seeing her as a theocrat, but the book should end that talk for anyone not starving raving mad.

Palin is very religious and this obviously informs her personal life deeply, but I see no evidence that it impacts her public policy decisions in any way foreign to the American experiment. In fact, if anything one can question whether Palin’s faith is not too privatized.

She argues public policy on the merits, but then describes her final decision in passionate terms using the language of religion. This is standard American practice. So far in the text her faith appears to inform the person Palin becomes who then makes political decisions using reasons available to any American.

If she is “too religious,” then so are most Americans. She is no prude and obviously has lived in the real world.

My guess is that faith forms her moral intuitions and makes certain views, like small government, plausible, but is not used to determine positions where it has nothing directly to say. It is hard to see her using the Bible (directly) to determine energy policy given her discussions in this chapter.

In fact, she may use the Bible the way she used Plato earlier .  . . as a way to sanctify (just as Plato intellectualized) her decisions. Does Palin every bow the knee to an idea contrary to her lived experience? The wise often do this as they know the limits of their own experience, but a fool with power never does.

There is hope in Palin’s resignation for the energy board for here, it seems, was one selfless act driven by what Lewis would call the Tao.

It is common to use old books merely to confirm and not to challenge our ideas, but would be most unfortunate since it would mark her as a superficial Christian. A Christian must always be frightened by the Bible, because it makes demands of him that only a saint could even come close to meeting and that no saint ever believes he has met.

A more charitable reading, more likely at this point in the book, is that her faith gives her a basic view of reality and that she then uses that view to make fact-based decisions. Since her views are fairly standard Christian ideas and America historically has been overwhelmingly Christian, her basic views have not had to change when facing political realities.

If this is the basic relationship of her faith to her politics, then her views are well within the Christian and American mainstream. Her private religious practices may (or may not) be more esoteric, but then they did not seem to impact her public policy decisions and so are only our concern if she makes them part of her public persona or platform.

She has not done so in this book so far.

Even on this charitable reading of Palin, however, she still falls into the unfortunate habit of using religious language improperly to baptize her decisions. She should lose this if she can. While American presidents including Franklin Roosevelt (!) have done this in a more extreme manner, Palin will be held to a higher standard than they were as an Evangelical Christian.

She should do nothing to comfort those who think Billy Graham, the Bishop of Phoenix, or Al Mohler are budding theocrats.

Palin as Governor

Palin wanted to clean up corruption in Alaskan politics and she went after it with a vengeance. It is hard to see that she wanted to do much else.

If Palin runs for President of the United States, I suspect she will want little in terms of new domestic policy. She will throw the rascals in jail and then trim and cut. She would enjoy the trappings of office and be an excellent head of state.

Reading about her goals in office makes her resignation understandable for the first time. Palin does not think the state can solve many problems. Where the state constitution gave the state power and that power had been used to create financial reserves, Palin saw political rats eating the patrimony of Alaska.

When she cleaned the rats out of government, her major mission was accomplished. She was not one to grow government or develop new programs. She is a Cal Coolidge in that regard, though she loves the “bully pulpit” aspect of the job more than Silent Cal ever did. Nobody will ever call her Silent Sarah.

When the vice-presidential loss made her a polarizing figure in Alaska, she could no longer be a unifying head of the state. She had limiting governing priorities, so why stay? She had a competent second in command who wanted the job and she did not.

This is a charming picture in a politician. Perhaps Governor Palin can be trusted with power, because she wishes to do so little with it. I can easily believe that her domestic agenda would discomfort the powerful in both parties, but that actual legislation would be simple.

Palin is no Eva Peron.

Palin as Excutive: A Tough Question
If Palin runs for President, we will only be able to judge her based on her short time as governor of Alaska and as mayor. What is her executive style?

If I accept her description of her time as governor, Palin obviously inspires fierce loyalty. Before her vice-presidential selection, she was able to govern as a bi-partisan figure. However, it is not clear that she can inspire the long term loyalty of subordinates more capable than she is.

All leaders must hire people who are better at parts of their job than they are. Reagan was a master of this and could inspire academics and technicians far more “competent” at tasks with fierce loyalty. Reagan was a world class leader who was content to lead . . . and kept excellent men and women nearby like Judge William Clark who could tell him the truth.

In this autobiography, Palin too often has followers or those she dazzles and I see too few long term people in her brain trust. She has no enduring kitchen cabinet or group of backers. This is very, very disturbing.

Her old allies often become new foes and she is quick with a quip to put them in her place. A good executive should command loyalty, but no produce sycophants or demand followers . . . at least in a republic.

My reading of Palin leaves me with this question, “Who are the people, smarter and more capable than she, that have stuck by Palin? Who is Palin accountable too intellectually?”

In a republic a president who cannot inspire the loyalty of the peers, and not the obedience of subordinates, runs the risk of insulating herself from critical information.

Palin as Governor: Detail Nerd

The bulk of the chapter on Palin’s years as governor remind me of what I like about her candidacy. Palin obviously cared about her state and tried to deliver on her promises.

She cared about getting the details right on the state budget, which is after all more important than getting the details right on a Plato quote in her ghost-written book.

I was reminded that before she was Palin-Hell-Raising Icon-made-divisive by attacks, she was a popular and respected reform leader. Democrats in Alaska liked her better than some Republican leaders. It is easy to see why.

She had a record of real accomplishments, including an ethics reform bill and a major gas deal.

As a working mother, she pioneered the sort of bring-your-children to work model that more companies should try.

Sarah Palin obviously was a good governor and John McCain either ruined or made her. It is hard to see which is true at the moment . . . though safe to say her bank account will be better off after this book.

I have been hard on the weaknesses of this book, but Sarah Palin has her strengths as an executive and as a leader and this chapter shows them.

If Palin is not running for President of the United States, then I am sorry to have given this pleasant little book such close scrutiny. Palin has been hit hard by gutter politics and she deserves the gratitude of every Republican for the thankless task of breathing some life into the moribund McCain campaign.

I voted for Palin and not McCain, really.

Palin, however, does not demonstrate enough growth over time in serious policy areas. I don’t care if her goal is a Fox News or Oprah variety show, but she wants (wanted?) to be taken seriously as a leader and I respect that.

I cannot respect the lack of substance. People complain about the length of this live blog, but her book is four hundred pages long. It has details about many areas of her life, but there are so few ideas.

Palin gets things done, but does she have a sufficient philosophical core? I gave her the benefit of the doubt in 2008 based on her record and I am still impressed with this record . . . but the record has not grown, her philosophy is no more clear, and that is not satisfactory if she wants to be leader of the Free World.

Palin herself knows that only a person growing and on the edge can make positive change.

Perhaps John McCain is guilty of ruining a career by promoting a person before she was ready. Perhaps.

Or perhaps I am being too critical. . . but President Obama has been taken to task (rightly I think) for his self-indulgent writings, they are masterpieces of reflection compared to this. I agree with little of his political philosophy, but he obviously has one.

Surely it is obvious that a bad philosophy is best met by a better one and not be none at all? Common