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Going Rogue
An American Life
by Gov. Sarah Palin


(Click for Amazon book review)

BOOK REVIEW by OnTheIssues.org:

This book sent Palin on a nationwide book tour, including numerous media appearances which greatly raised her profile. The result of the book tour has established Palin as the frontrunner for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. There's a long time until the election, but for now, Palin is more popular than Huckabee, Romney, Gingrich, and all the other likely prospects.

Since the 2008 campaign, Palin has been a polarizing figure, but some of that came from her assigned tasks in the McCain campaign. For example, she was assigned the task of delivering the campaign opinion on Bill Ayres, which was that Obama was "palling around with terrorists" (pp. 306-7), although Palin suggested then and now that McCain should have made more of the Ayers association. She also was the primary campaign spokesperson regarding "Joe the Plumber" (pp. 304-5), although she was certainly a willing and enthusiastic spokesperson, on that topic and on all polarizing issues. In other words, Palin's polarization is well-deserved, and she seems to welcome the label. Palin does not, however, welcome media attacks on her, of which there are very many. This book gives Palin a chance to respond to the media attacks.

The title of the book comes from a McCain staffer who accused Palin of "going rogue", by giving her own opinion on issues on which the McCain campaign had not authorized her opinion. Palin is not one to withhold her opinions on anything, McCain's desires notwithstanding. Palin's book focuses on three of her most strongly-held opinions:

1. ENERGY: Palin claims that Alaska can supply most of America's energy needs, if only we would "drill, baby, drill" (that's the title of Chapter Three). Prior to being governor, Palin was appointed as Alaska's Energy Czar; as governor, her proudest accomplishment was completing the AGIA project (a 1,700-mile gas pipeline, pp. 127-8 and 156-7). Energy is Palin's greatest passion; but she'll surprise environmentalists by having pushed a goal of 50% renewable electricity, a higher goal than Obama's 20% renewable target.
2. GUNS: Palin is equally impassioned about guns. We don't use the usual phrase "gun rights," because that's not her passion--it's guns themselves, or more specifically hunting and fishing. She refers to those activities repeatedly as obtaining "local organic protein sources," although one doubts that will seduce many vegetarians into voting for her. And she alienates vegetarians with phrases like "I love meat" (pp. 18-9, by which she means HUNTING for meat). Palin includes lots of pictures of her bagging moose; skinning fish; and enough to indicate it's not just for photo ops.
3. ETHICS: Government ethics is Palin's professional passion--it's how she got elected, having ousted the incumbent Republican governor on grounds of questionable ethics (pp. 112-3) after having resigned as Energy Czar on grounds of the energy agency's bad ethics (pp. 96-9). Palin's focus on ethics, and campaign reform, and government transparency, and so on, is the reason McCain chose her for V.P., since McCain has the same focus.
4. RELIGION: This is NOT Palin's passion--although the media portrayed Palin as if she were a Jesus-freak. She's certainly proudly a Christian, and pro-life and anti-evolution and all the other stances that implies, but she focuses her attention and her basis for policy decisions elsewhere. Typical of her attitude is how she met her husband Todd: she describes him as a cussin' non-church-goer, but acceptable because he had been baptized (pp. 33-7). McCain's other reason for choosing Palin as V.P. was that she brought with her an army of a million Christian conservative volunteers. The Christian conservative movement adores Palin, but for those who want a preacher, Mike Huckabee is their candidate, not Palin.

-- Jesse Gordon, editor-in-chief, OnTheIssues.org, Nov. 2009