Palin Has Really Gone Rogue

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Manuel Balce Ceneta / AP Photo UPDATE: The governor’s resignation speech seemed less like a farewell than like an inauguration of a new campaign. She’s unhinged, writes Michelle Goldberg—but so is much of her competition.

Most speculation about why Sarah Palin decided to quit her governorship falls into one of two camps. Some think that there’s a big scandal looming: as the always perspicacious Josh Marshall wrote, “I would not be surprised if this latest round of revelations shook something else loose that we haven't heard about yet.” Her bizarre press conference felt rambling and manic, almost breathless, and she assumed a martyred pose in talking about the numerous ethics complaints that have been made against her. She certainly sounded like someone facing oncoming disaster.

In Alaska there weren’t many paths to fame. What else could she have done besides politics?

Yet some of her most ardent backers have a different explanation: She’s gearing up to run for president in 2012. As Bill Kristol, a man who’s had an enormous role in creating her national profile, wrote, “If Palin wants to run in 2012, why not do exactly what she announced today? It's an enormous gamble—but it could be a shrewd one.” He continued, “[H]aven't conservatives been lamenting the lack of a national leader? Well, now she'll try to be that.” And there were parts of her speech suggesting she’s getting ready for a new challenge: “It would be apathetic to just kind of hunker down and go with the flow. We’re fisherman. We know only dead fish go with the flow… There is such a need to build up, and fight for our state and our country.”

On the face of it, it seems preposterous that Palin might think she could maintain any political credibility at all after walking away from her job simply because she has her eye on bigger things. But Palin has long had an almost dementedly inflated sense of her own destiny. In one of the most quoted passages of Todd Purdham’s eviscerating Vanity Fair profile of Palin, he writes that, in traveling through Alaska, several people told him that, in trying to understand their governor, “they had consulted the definition of ‘narcissistic personality disorder’ in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.” Said disorder, Purdum points out, is marked by “a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy.”

As a description of Palin, that sounds about right. It also sounds about right as a description of Newt Gingrich, Mark Sanford, John Edwards, and maybe even Bill Clinton. There is nothing new about politicians who are staggeringly egotistical and heedlessly dishonest, politicians with fantastic reserves of self-righteousness and self-pity but a shriveled capacity for loyalty. But we don’t usually see this particular kind of craziness in women. Palin is the rare female politician who is as much a megalomaniac as her male peers. Maybe more.

What made Palin the way she is? Society generally doesn’t reward single-minded ambition and deluded self-absorption in women outside of entertainment or fashion. Had Palin been born on the mainland, her talents and charisma might easily have been channeled into television—she was, after all, once an anchorwoman. But in Alaska there weren’t many paths to fame. What else could she have done besides politics? As Purdum wrote, “In the same way that Lyndon Johnson could only have come from Texas, or Bill Clinton from Arkansas, Palin and all that she is could only have come from Wasilla.” Once she entered the political fray, her beauty and charm softened the impact of her ambition, making her seem merely feisty where a less attractive woman would have been smeared as a harpy. By the time she’d emerged on the national stage, her confidence—had had a unique chance to grow and flower.

But it also metastasized into deluded arrogance. Palin’s public statements have been full of petty, easily refutable mendacity, delivered with the vehemence of a compulsive liar. Purdum’s piece reveals one tiny but telling incident, in which Palin told McCain aides that she and her husband had been without insurance of any kind in the early years of their marriage. “Checking with Todd Palin himself revealed that, no, they had had catastrophic coverage all along,” Purdum writes. “This sort of slipperiness—about both what the truth was and whether the truth even mattered—persisted on questions great and small.”

On Thursday, CBS News had a small scoop revealing a similarly cavalier attitude towards the truth. After McCain’s chief strategist, Steve Schmidt, rejected a request by Palin to reply to a report that her husband, Todd, has been a member of the secessionist Alaska Independence Party, Palin came forward with a preposterous excuse, like a teenager trying to explain away the incriminating smell of liquor—or a governor trying to cover up a mysterious jaunt to Buenos Aires. Secession, she insisted—despite all available evidence—is not part of the party’s platform, and besides, Todd “was only a 'member' bc independent alaskans too often check that 'Alaska Independent' box on voter registrations thinking it just means non partisan. He caught his error when changing our address and checked the right box. I still want it fixed." A clearly exasperated Schmidt wrote back that secession is the AIP’s “entire reason for existence. A cursory examination of the website shows that the party exists for the purpose of seceding from the union. That is the stated goal on the front page of the web site. Our records indicate that todd was a member for seven years. If this is incorrect then we need to understand the discrepancy. The statement you are suggesting be released would be inaccurate.”

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July 2, 2009 | 10:58pm

Politics, Sarah Palin, Palin Personality, Palin Narcissism, Todd Purdum Palin, Sarah Palin Narcissist, Todd Purdum, Mark Sanford, Todd Palin, John Edwards, Steve Schmidt, Newt Gingrich, Bill Clinton

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What a subtle little slam Goldberg makes. Nice style. Good form if your into liberal licks. Substance is merky, supposition definitely biased and the twist on feminism cutting but not too since it's a woman judging a woman. Is this what they're teaching in "J"ournalism now? Sounds like she is setting up a formula for a tell all to negate Palin's political existence. Kinda makes my stomach turn; too cheesy.

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Palin Has Really Gone Rogue

Palin Has Really Gone Rogue