Yesterday we received word that Sarah Palin has signed a contract to become a regular contributor at Fox News. The news is hardly a surprise to anyone who has followed her strange ascent to stardom over the past six months. One might even say that it is the logical next step in her career. After resigning as Alaska Governor in bizarre fashion last July, Palin embarked on a long and lucrative book tour that catapulted both her book and her public persona to the top of the charts. To add, her doltish musings on Facebook have reawakened the fascination and disgust of the “liberal media.” She now seems poised to become all that her loyal base wants her to be and all that her detractors despise.
It has been an interesting and, no doubt, eye-opening two years for the erstwhile vice presidential candidate. Like the dark, cold Wasilla winter, that ill-fated bid for the White House now seems a distant memory. Along with others, I suspect that when the real book on Sarah Palin is written, her brief and failed political career will be considered nothing more than the ashes out of which the phoenix rose. We have only seen the beginnings of that resurrection, but by all measures it has been a highly successful one to date.
That all assumes, of course, that Palin’s quest for political office is over. Her actions since her resignation do not give us much reason to believe otherwise. And, to be sure, that makes a great deal of sense. After a series of difficult ethics inquiries, a brutal national campaign, a cursed partnership with John McCain, and the evil doings of Katie Couric, Levi Johnston and Todd Purdum, Palin seemed last July like a woman ready for a change. Holding political office is, after all, strenuous. It requires knowing and learning facts, playing by the rules, obeying the law, and other such irksome things. Palin’s furtive governance and contemptuous ignorance of responsibility would have landed any other politician in a lot more trouble a lot more quickly, but she benefited from a certain mixture of charm and interpersonal skill that allowed her to compensate for her severe shortcomings. Sometime shortly after losing the election, two things must have dawned on her: first, the determination of the media to grill and expose her was not going to go away, and second, she could deploy her personal skills outside the arena of politics and, in so doing, earn herself a lot more money and fame without having to deal with the hassles of political office.
No one can say for sure whether she stumbled upon these realizations by herself, or whether someone, like Purdum, showed her the light. In any case, leaving office was a smart decision for her, and considering all that had happened, the only right decision. She could have done without the bravado about what quitters do versus what she was doing (since she was in fact quitting), but the basic strategy was sound.
Still, in some ways, her decision to leave Alaska and its many aggravations behind is strange. In the quintessentially American culture of escapism, the road toward new beginnings has always led west, to the mountains, the big sky, and perhaps Alaska. But Palin, who likes to think of herself as fundamentally, if not quintessentially, American, is headed east, to the bright lights of New York City. In that sense, she is writing a new and updated narrative of American renewal that fits more neatly within the geopolitical landscape of 21st century America. This is a narrative to which many Americans, particularly those who feel stranded in what was once the great frontier, can relate; even if you don’t know much, don’t own much, and have a lot weighing you down, the opportunity in America for celebrity, fame and money never fades – the city lights never dim.
How this move will affect Palin’s “rogue” image is uncertain. She most likely thinks that a national media platform will allow her to continue to be her folksy, impervious self except that she’ll get to play to a bigger audience. That may prove to be true. At the same time, though, the people who have supported her all along may find themselves slightly disappointed that they will no longer get to see her wading in the Nushagak or toting her 12-gauge through the tundra. Instead, they will see her each evening all glittered up on a polished New York television set. To many folks from middle America, she will rather suddenly lose the appearance of “neighbor Sarah” that has thus far been her trademark; she will no longer be able to maintain the veneer of the strong, sympathizing, wolf-hunting mom. Instead, she will be something more like an Oprah-for-social-conservatives, and a distant one at that. If Palin has done any thinking about this, it is probably that you can take the woman out of the frontier but not the frontier out of the woman.
We will see if that turns out to be true. She may ultimately discover what many before her who have made the big move from the country to New York have discovered – that it really is a world apart, and for better or worse, truly isolated in various ways from the rest of America. She may also find that it is a place that affords many new opportunities while removing some old ones. For a certain perspective on this, she may turn to Mike Huckabee; once a charming, Southern preacher who knew how to connect with simple people outside of politics, he has, through his show on Fox, turned into a kind of foppish, late-night entertainer. Something similar could certainly happen to Sarah, and if it did, she would not have much left in the tank.
It is said that tension results from having choices; if you have no choices, you have no tension. For Sarah Palin, the realization that politics is not for her may have removed a major source of tension in her life. She certainly seems like a woman reborn. How long her run as a media celebrity lasts is yet to be seen, but by all accounts, it is all she really has left.
Mack Lannahan 