• Sarah Palin, Going Rogue: an American Life, New York: HarperCollins, 414 pages, 2009, $28.99

As I started to read Sarah Palin’s book, Going Rogue: An American Life, Palin visited Fort Bragg for a book signing. The local media reported that hundreds attended the signing, but the John Locke Foundation’s Karen Palasek volunteered at the event and she tells me that there were in fact between 1,600 to 2,000 attendees. In reading the book, I quickly realized that just as the media underestimate the crowds at Palin events, they are also underestimating Sarah Palin.

All of the hoopla over Palin not being allowed to speak at Fort Bragg over concerns she might say something derogatory about President Obama was needless hype. The book’s dedication, showing her love and respect for the men and women in uniform, should have told Fort Bragg officials that she would never go to any military installation and demean the president.

Going Rogue is more than just a book about Sarah Palin; it is a book about Alaska.
Woven within Palin’s book are history and geography lessons about her adopted home state. Few may know that in 1964, a 9.2 magnitude earthquake dramatically changed the topography of Alaska forever. Moreover, most working class Alaskans, like the Palins, practice subsistence living. “If you don’t hunt and fish: you don’t eat,” writes Palin. The book allows readers to understand Palin’s work ethic and that she is not afraid of hard physical labor.

Palin chronicles her grass-roots campaign for governor, which pitted her against the corrupt members of her own Republican party. She expresses the unique idea that politicians work for the people who elected them.

As governor, she read the bills she signed. When presented with her first budget as governor. Palin asked, “What did past governors do? How did they get through these?” “They didn’t,” was the response. Past governors skimmed the budget and then signed it. Not Palin! She and her advisors spent long hours going through the budget line by line, slashing some items while increasing others, including education.

She is critical of the people who ran John McCain’s presidential campaign, but not McCain. Handlers micromanaged every aspect of her candidacy, including what she would wear and say. They hamstrung a candidate who had won a well-run, grass-roots campaign.

Readers will be shocked by the campaign’s treatment of Palin. There were major mistakes throughout, including a failure to prepare the traditional briefing book that is sent to the media. This book provides a biography and a list of the candidate’s accomplishments. Had this book been produced, it would have silenced much of the critcism leveled against her supposedly thin resume.

As I read Palin’s book, I began thinking about all of the insults describing her, such as “Valley girl,” uneducated, uninformed, unaccomplished, loser, and quitter. But the words in her book ring true. The aforementioned labels do not apply to Palin.

Palin is far more influential now that she is no longer an elected official and is not constrained by what she calls the invisible “headquarters.” She is free to express her strong free-market and small-government beliefs.

While reading Palin’s book, the word “dangerous” kept crossing my mind. Dangerous for liberals because people like and trust her, and dangerous for the Republican establishment because conservatives see her as genuine. But I kept putting this word out of my mind.

The end of the book validated my thoughts. Using Gen. Douglas McArthur’s words, Palin says, “We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.”

Palin’s father states, “Sarah’s not retreating: she’s reloading!” Alaskan Dewey Whetsell says of Sarah’s haters, “They are not scuba divers. … No one ever told them what happens when you continually jab and pester a barracuda. Without warning, it will spin around and tear your face off,” Whetsell says.

Will she run for president? Only time will tell.