I came back from Alaska with the sense
that the further Palin goes, the more she resembles not Joan of Arc but
Eva Perón. In their book Nicholas Fraser and Marysa
Navarro wrote of Perón that “the only people with whom she felt totally
at ease were those who accepted what she was doing unconditionally” and
that eventually “there was no one left around her capable of
criticizing anything she did.”
In case you haven't seen it, Joe McGinniss has been to Alaska and has come back with a titillating article giving us the latest on Sarah Palin. Palin has been screwing up on several fronts.
For starters, there's her pipeline problem (broken promises, etc.); and then there's the diversion of her focus from her job in Alaska to her continuing campaign for the presidency (God told her to persist). Oh, and then there's the fury she has stirred up by turning down "stimulus" funds for Alaska's schools. McGinniss sums it all up like this:
The bottom line is that for all her posturing, and as much as she might
wish it were not so, Palin’s only accomplishment in two years of work
on the pipeline project has been to give $500 million from Alaska’s
budget to Canadians and to leave Alaska, once again, at the
not-so-tender mercies of Big Oil.
And with Palin’s attention shifting several thousand miles to the southeast, Alaskans are starting to catch on. In its January 27 edition, Bradners’ Alaska Legislative Digest, a publication that had long been supportive of Palin, had this to say: “The problem we see is that we continue to see Governor Palin as not really interested in governing, not interested in chasing an issue to the bottom. Further, our assessment is our governor just doesn’t understand the difference between campaigning and governing. We increasingly suspect that Governor Sarah Palin now has a focus that is Washington D.C. beltway politics, and Alaska may pay a price for pandering to interests quite far to the right of center.”
And with Palin’s attention shifting several thousand miles to the southeast, Alaskans are starting to catch on. In its January 27 edition, Bradners’ Alaska Legislative Digest, a publication that had long been supportive of Palin, had this to say: “The problem we see is that we continue to see Governor Palin as not really interested in governing, not interested in chasing an issue to the bottom. Further, our assessment is our governor just doesn’t understand the difference between campaigning and governing. We increasingly suspect that Governor Sarah Palin now has a focus that is Washington D.C. beltway politics, and Alaska may pay a price for pandering to interests quite far to the right of center.”
