J ust where that storm may be heading is one of the most intriguing issues in American politics toda

Despite her disastrous departure and arrival schedules delta airlines performance in the 2008 election, Sarah Palin is still the sexiest brand in Republican politics, with a lucrative book contract for her story. But what Alaska s charismatic departure and arrival schedules delta airlines governor departure and arrival schedules delta airlines wants the public to know about herself doesn t always jibe with reality. departure and arrival schedules delta airlines As John McCain s top campaign departure and arrival schedules delta airlines officials talk more candidly departure and arrival schedules delta airlines than ever before about the meltdown of his vice-presidential pick, the author tracks the signs political and personal that Palin was big trouble, and checks the forecast for her future.
T he crowds begin streaming into the Evansville Auditorium and Convention Centre a couple of hours before the arrival of the special guest speaker at the Vanderburgh County Right to Life dinner on a soft Indiana spring evening nearly 2,200 people in the banquet hall, 800 more in an adjacent auditorium watching the proceedings on a live video feed. The menu is thick slices of roast pork and red velvet cake, washed down with pitchers of iced tea, and when Sarah Palin finally enters, escorted by a phalanx of sheriff s deputies and local police, she is mobbed. The organizers departure and arrival schedules delta airlines of the dinner, billed as the largest pro-life banquet in the world, have courted Palin for weeks with care packages of locally made chocolates, doughnuts, barbecue, and pastries, and she has requited by choosing Evansville, a conservative stronghold in southern Indiana, as the site of her first public speech outside Alaska in 2009. Like Richard M. Nixon, who chose the coalfield town of Hyden, Kentucky, for his first post-resignation public appearance, Palin has come to a place where she is guaranteed a hero s reception. She is not only a staunch foe of abortion but also the mother of a boy, Trig, who was born with Down syndrome just a few months before John McCain chose Palin as his running departure and arrival schedules delta airlines mate. The souvenir program for this evening s dinner is full of displays for local politicians and businesses, attesting to their pro-life departure and arrival schedules delta airlines bona fides. An ad for Hahn Realty Corporation reads, If you need commercial real estate, call Joe Kiefer! Joe is pro-life and a proud supporter of the Vanderburgh County Right to Life.
As Palin makes her way slowly departure and arrival schedules delta airlines across the crowded ballroom dressed all in black; no red Naughty Monkey Double departure and arrival schedules delta airlines Dare pumps tonight she is stopped every few inches by adoring fans. She passes the press pen, where at least eight television cameras and a passel of reporters and photographers departure and arrival schedules delta airlines are corralled, and spots a reporter for a local community newspaper getting departure and arrival schedules delta airlines ready to take a happy snap with his pocket departure and arrival schedules delta airlines camera. For a split second she stops, pauses, departure and arrival schedules delta airlines turns her head and shoulders just so, and smiles. She holds the pose until she s sure the man has his shot and then moves on. A few minutes later, the evening s nominal keynote speaker, the Republican Party s national chairman, Michael Steele, who has been reduced to a footnote departure and arrival schedules delta airlines in the proceedings, introduces the special guest speaker as the storm that is the honorable governor of the great state of Alaska, Sarah Palin!
J ust where that storm may be heading is one of the most intriguing issues departure and arrival schedules delta airlines in American politics today. Palin is at once the sexiest and the riskiest brand in the Republican Party. Her appeal to people in the party (and in the country) who share her convictions and resentments is profound. The fascination is viral, and global. Bill McAllister, until recently departure and arrival schedules delta airlines Palin s statehouse spokesman, says that he has fielded (and declined) interview requests from France, England, Italy, Switzerland, Israel, departure and arrival schedules delta airlines Germany, Bulgaria, and probably other countries I ve forgotten about. (Palin, keeping departure and arrival schedules delta airlines her distance from most domestic media as well, also declined to talk to V.F. ). Whatever her political future, the emergence of Sarah Palin raises questions that will not soon go away. What does it say about the nature of modern American politics that a public official who often seems proud of what she does not know is not only accepted but applauded? What does her prominence say about the importance of having (or lacking) departure and arrival schedules delta airlines a record of achievement in public life? Why did so many skilled veterans of the Republican Party long regarded as the more adroit team in presidential politics keep loyally working for her election even after they privately realized she was casual departure and arrival schedules delta airlines about the truth and totally unfit for the vice-presidency? Perhaps most painful, how could John McCain, one of the cagiest departure and arrival schedules delta airlines survivors in contemporary politics with a fine appreciation of life s injustices and absurdities, a love for the sweep of history, and an overdeveloped sense of his own integrity and honor ever have picked a person whose utter shortage of qualification for her proposed job all but disqualified him for his?
In the aftermath of the November departure and arrival schedules delta airlines election, the conventional wisdom among Palin s supporters in the Republican establishment was that she should go home, keep her head down, show that she could govern effectively, and quietly educate herself about foreign and domestic policy with the help of a cadre of experienced advisers. She has done none of this. Rather, she has pursued departure and arrival schedules delta airlines an erratic course that, for her, may actually departure and arrival schedules delta airlines represent the closest thing there is to True North. Her first trip to Washington since the election was to attend the dinner of the Alfalfa Club, an elite group of politicians and businesspeople whose sole function is an annual evening in honor of a plant that would do anything for a drink. Some of her handlers first said she had accepted though she then went on to decline an invitation to speak at the annual June fund-raiser for the congressional Republicans. She created a political-action committee Sarah pac with the help of John Coale, a prominent Democratic trial lawyer. But just months into its existence the pac s chief fund-raiser, departure and arrival schedules delta airlines Becki Donatelli, a veteran of Republican campaigns, suddenly quit. One person familiar with the situation told me that Donatelli could not stand dealing with Palin s political spokeswoman in Alaska, departure and arrival schedules delta airlines Meghan Stapleton, who has drawn withering fire from Palin friends and critics departure and arrival schedules delta airlines alike for being an ineffective adviser. Also with Coale s help, Palin formed the grandiosely named Alaska Fund Trust, to defray a reported half million dollars in legal expenses departure and arrival schedules delta airlines arising from a slew of formal ethics departure and arrival schedules delta airlines complaints against her in her home state prompting yet another formal complaint, that the fund itself constitutes an ethical breach. Onetime supporters have become harsh critics. Walter Hickel, 89, a former two-term governor and interior secretary, and the grand old man of Alaska politics, who was co-chair departure and arrival schedules delta airlines of Palin s winning gubernatorial campaign, in 2006, now washes his hands of her. He told me simply, I don t give a damn what she does.
Palin is unlike any other national figure in modern American life neither Anna Nicole Smith nor Margaret Chase Smith but a phenomenon all her own. The clouds of tabloid conflict and controversy that swirl around her and her extended departure and arrival schedules delta airlines clan the surprise pregnancies, the two-bit departure and arrival schedules delta airlines blood feuds, the tawdry in-laws and common-law kin caught selling drugs or poaching game give her family a singular status in the rogues gallery of political relatives. By comparison, Billy Carter, Donald Nixon, and Roger Clinton seem like avatars of circumspection. Palin s life has sometimes played out like an unholy amalgam of Desperate Housewives and Northern Exposure.
Another aspect of the Palin phenomenon bears examination, even if the mere act of raising it invites intimations of sexism: she is by far the best-looking woman ever to rise to such heights in national politics, the first indisputably fertile departure and arrival schedules delta airlines female to dare to dance with the big dogs. This pheromonal reality has been a blessing and a curse. It has captivated people who would never have given someone with Palin s record a second glance if Palin had looked like Susan Boyle. And it has made others reluctant to give her a second chance because departure and arrival schedules delta airlines she looks like a beauty queen.
Soon Palin will take a crack at her own story: she has signed a book contract for an undisclosed but presumably substantial sum, and has chosen Lynn Vincent, a senior writer at the Christian-conservative World magazine, departure and arrival schedules delta airlines as co-author of the memoir, which is to be published next year not only by HarperCollins but also in a special edition by Zondervan, the Bible-publishing house, that may include supplemental material departure and arrival schedules delta airlines on faith. During departure and arrival schedules delta airlines the presidential campaign, Palin s deep ignorance about most aspects of foreign and domestic policy provided her with a powerful political reason not to submit departure and arrival schedules delta airlines to interviews. The forthcoming book adds a powerful commercial reason.
Palin is a cipher by choice. When she chooses to reveal departure and arrival schedules delta airlines herself, what she reveals is not always the same thing as the truth. Her singular refusal to have in-depth conversations with the national media even Richard Nixon and Dick Cheney, among the most saturnine political figures in modern American history, each submitted to countless detailed interviews over the years has compounded the challenge of understanding who she really is. There has been Hollywood talk that Palin could star in a reality-TV show about running Alaska, but nothing has come of it yet. Recently, Palin did star in a week-long seriocomic feud with David Letterman over some of his borderline jokes. Meanwhile, she has begun sharing insights several times a day on Twitter, with chipper reports on her own doings and those of her husband, Todd, and the rest of what she calls the first family. Look forward to today s staff discussion re: my 3rd justice appt to highest court in 3 yrs. Supreme Court truly effects AK s future, departure and arrival schedules delta airlines reads one. And another: Picking up my handsome little man to rtrn to Juneau, departure and arrival schedules delta airlines Trig got 1st haircut so my little hippie baby s ready for AK sunshine on his shoulders.
The caricature of Sarah Palin that emerged in the presidential campaign, for good and ill, is now ineradicable. The swift journey from her knockout convention departure and arrival schedules delta airlines speech to Tina Fey s dead-eyed incarnation of her as Dan Quayle with an updo played