The Unsinkable Sarah Palin

Ethan Miller / Getty Images The Alaskan’s book tour is just the start. John Batchelor on how Palin matches up with Obama—and why she’s the one to beat for 2012.

Sarah Palin has ignited her Twitter account: “Crossing border to Hoosier territory… Excited to meet Indiana folks who want to read about solutions to US challenges.” And with that, she launched what appears to be a thousand-day campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in the summer of 2012. Her glamorously homespun book, the hip baby-blue bus branded with her online addresses, the zealous frosh staff, the scrupulous TV choice of Oprah and Barbara Walters, and especially the selection of big Blue states to begin the ground tour—MI, OH, IN, FL, NC, VA, PA—describe not just a scenario for the GOP nomination, but also a carefully constructed map of electoral votes for the presidency against Barack Obama.

“The polls even in the Republican Party do not correctly speak to the power that Palin brings to the campaign trail, a mix of feverish Reagan myth and pop Fox iconoclasm.”

Palin’s Going Rogue book tour launch is a one-upsmanship imitation of The Audacity of Hope book tour that launched Mr. Obama in the fall of 2006. At the time, Mr. Obama was a very junior senator from Illinois on few lists for the presidency; even his publisher admitted expectations for the book were modest given the immediate non-fiction competition from John Grisham, Bill O’Reilly and Bob Woodward. Nonetheless, beginning nearly three years ago, on October 19, 2006, Obama’s tour used flattering TV appearances on the Today Show and Oprah, combined with worshipful reviews—“that rare politician who can write”—and choice independent bookstore appearances in McCain territory such as Tempe, Arizona, to rocket to Number 1 on the New York Times list. By Christmastime, the senator was deep in conference with David Axelrod, planning how to jump in front of the all-world favorite Mrs. Clinton by opening an exploratory committee in January 2007—a move that sold even more books.

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• More Daily Beast contributors on Palin’s book tourPalin’s book tour and book sales already dwarfs Obama’s. Yet she presents herself in much the same dewy, charming, handsome way the president did when he first appeared a national figure. Both are youthful, well-married, family-centered outsiders from small iconoclastic Pacific states who entered politics at the ground floor and stayed there, unnoticed and unneeded, until lightning struck on stage at nomination conventions of famous Vietnam veteran losers John Kerry and John McCain. Palin and Obama now keep a wary eye on each other in the manner of Ali and Frazier looking for a rematch, or like the leads in the opening act tiff of a screwball romantic comedy. The president gave Palin a gigantic gift when he paused in China to say he wouldn’t read her book. And Palin lavished on the president a golden-tongued Palin-ism—“bass-ackwards”—to dismiss the White House’s economics. It’s clear who plays Desi, the exasperated straight man, and who plays carrot-topped Lucy.

Before Mrs. Palin can face off against her fellow bestselling author, she must confront and outmaneuver the opposition in her own party. Moderates such as New Mexico gubernatorial candidates Doug Turner and Susanna Martinez are already hiding in Area 51 from Mrs. Palin’s spectacular Roswell book event on December 1. (Palin shares with the much admired Barry Goldwater a winning credulity about government-suppressed UFOs.)The only rival for the nomination worth measuring at this time is the former Massachusetts governor and self-regarding Mormon, Mitt Romney, whose suave act fell short in 2008 to Mike Huckabee’s foodie hambone and McCain’s same old song. How does Mrs. Palin match up againt Mitt Romney? Like Ali to Liston, like George Washington to the Hessians, like Alexander to the Persians: in short, very well. Romney is weighted down not only by the right-wing distrust of his Massachusetts health care legacy, but also by the fact that his Bain Capital riches make him, after the bailout of 2008, more of a banker bloated by bonuses rather than a pitchfork-toting commoner.

Palin’s autobiography promotes her as the voice of something vibrant but amorphous. Her PAC calls it “Commonsense Conservatives,” or “Patriots.” But it’s recognizably the familiar GOP posse of right-wing social conservatives, led by the evangelicals, that is now reinvigorated by the Tea Party phenomenon. The polls even in the Republican Party do not correctly speak to the power that Palin brings to the campaign trail—a mix of feverish Reagan myth and pop Fox iconoclasm. She is Annie Oakley; she is Joan of Arc; she is that rare thing in politics, a one-name phenomenon, “Sarah,” like “Ike,” like “the Colonel.” Up against her, Romney has only his money, his sobriety and his Ozzie and Harriet family. He’s no match for Sarah Palin’s secret weapons of Todd “First Dude” Palin, and their creative kids: Bristol (a one-woman melodrama), relentless Piper, and the center of gravity, Trig. At a glimpse of the bus full of this American family reality show, Iowa will swoon one cold night in January; the open primary of New Hampshire will look like an avalanche of hossanahs.

The political challenge for Palin these next thousand days is to endure the zombies of her own party, such as Gingrich, Limbaugh, and the creepy Dobson and his cronies, who will barter and beg for a ride on her bus. Palin is much more for them than they are for her, and it will be a test of her celebrity leadership to see if she discards these creatures before their body parts fall off in public. Palin, who knows how to say “…start cutting taxes,” needs nothing at all from the Republican Congress and is shrewd enough to treat them as an infestation of beetles. Sarah PAC will make a display of campaigning for Tea Party tyros who endorse her “Conservatism for Dummies” and stay back from the camera shot during the 2010 elections, but none is critical. And if all her picks lose dopily like Doug Hoffman did in the recent New York 23rd District special election, it will only make her burn brighter as the true Joan to the true believers.