I bumped into Sarah Palin yesterday while streaming Randy Rainbow videos on YouTube. There she was, our former governor, on an Internet infomercial advertising the services of some investment counselor.
Using her Alaska credit card, Sarah was comparing investing in the stock market to hiking in the wilderness, pleading with viewers that they might get mauled on Wall Street without the services of an experienced guide like the schmuck whose company she was hawking.
Sarah Barracuda still retains the crown as Alaska’s most famous person, but the downward spiral from vice-presidential candidate to third-tier celebrity has taken its toll. The self-proclaimed Mama Grizzly looked more like the smiling beluga at Shedd Aquarium, a stale act doing old tricks and grateful for the attention.
One can’t help but feel a bit sorry for Sarah, the first Alaska governor in years who had cajones enough to take on the oil industry and the criminals running the state Republican Party. A little crazy from the get-go, she won a pass from Alaska’s media for putting down some of our most rabid dogs, including Frank Murkowski.
Unfortunately, Sarah didn’t understand that power is whiskey, addictive and dangerous in large doses. She got so drunk on the adoration of crowds she started thinking she had chops to run the country. It happens.
The GOP used Sarah as an attack dog to fire up its base during a summer when Barrack Obama was winning hearts and sinking three-pointers around the globe. Sarah momentarily stole away the spotlight, dazzling the cameras and the crowds at the Republican National Convention like a red-blazered girl Mountie, arriving from the Great White North to save the day.
“What Sarah knows you can’t teach and what she doesn’t know, she can learn,” people said.
But it wasn’t true. Sarah refused to learn what she didn’t know, namely that leadership extends beyond showmanship. Even in the television age, political grandeur demands some familiarity with the world of letters and a grasp of nuance.
On the campaign trail, adoration distracted Sarah from the business of winning over voters and by the time she returned to her job as Alaska’s governor she was through with politics, relishing her new role as a cult leader and reality TV star. During a visit to Haines in the spring of 2009, Gov. Palin refused questions from the Chilkat Valley News and spent most of her time signing autographs.
The message was unmistakable: She needn’t be the governor because she was Sarah Palin.
These days the lamestream media considers Sarah the trailblazer who made Donald Trump possible, the pioneer of a crazed populism that relies on celebrity and outrageous statements to gain supporters and media attention, respectively.
But by the time she was onstage endorsing Donald Trump in 2016, Trump appeared the more presidential, if only for having not yet revealed the full extent of his psychosis. Plus, by then Sarah was looking like a frumpy, middle-aged school principal.
Political stardom for women in the U.S. still requires physical attractiveness, but Sarah relied too much on sexy to carry her act. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the Democratic answer to Sarah, but has brains to match her looks. Also, the former bartender knows well enough to sip the whiskey of power and to bide her time.
It’s fun to think where we might be if Sarah had turned down John McCain’s offer and remained in Juneau, riding herd on the oil industry and its stooges in the Alaska Legislature. She might have learned to govern, moved up the ranks, and become president.
Instead she stumbled into great power, fell under the spell of celebrity, and frittered away a chance at leading the nation.