A Tell-All With Nothing to Tell

The Associated Press is excited that a former aide to Governor Sarah Palin has written a “tell-all” expose:

A former member of SarahPalin’s inner circle has written a scathing tell-all, saying Mrs. Palin was ready to quit as governor months before she actually resigned and was eager to leave office when more lucrative opportunities came around.
“In 2009 I had the sense if she made it to the White House and I had stayed silent, I could never forgive myself,” Frank Bailey told the Associated Press. …
Billed as the first Palin book by a former aide, “Blind Allegiance” bolsters the perception of Mrs. Palin as self-serving, while casting Mr. Bailey as her enforcer — willing to do the dirty work, no questions asked. …
When Mrs. Palin burst onto the statewide political scene, she was seen as a “breath of fresh air” amid the corruption that had seeped into Alaska politics. “We looked at her as … that queen on a horse that could come in and save the state,” he said. “As we started to see that that was not the case, I kept silent, and I just kept on working.”

If you are tired of the wind-up and want to see the pitch, you have to keep reading. It may be a tell-all, but Mr. Bailey evidently doesn’t have much to tell. In paragraph 13, we finally get to a specific claim: that in 2006, Palin’s campaign for governor “coordinated with the Republican Governors Association, or RGA, in violation of campaign rules.” The purported violation apparently consisted of Palin being filmed entering an Anchorage hotel. Whatever. This is what the AP calls “scathing?” Surely Mr. Bailey’s “tell-all” has hotter stuff than that.
No, actually, it doesn’t:

Mr. Bailey said the final straw for him came in the summer of 2009, when Mrs. Palin didn’t attend a rally he believed she repeatedly had agreed to attend, for supporters of a voter initiative to require minors get parental consent for an abortion.

Wow, you can really see how that pushed Bailey over the brink, coming on top of Palin’s being filmed walking into a hotel. In reality, it is a testament to Governor Palin’s rectitude that a former aide who wants to get rich by writing an expose can’t come up with anything better than this.
All of which is a reminder that Palin has largely dropped out of presidential speculation lately. At some point, pundits seemed to reach a consensus that she is staying out of the race, and most analyses now count her out. But she remains a powerful force in the conservative movement and the Republican Party. I don’t agree with those who think the current GOP field is weak, but to the extent that some think there is a vacuum, Sarah Palin–not Chris Christie, Paul Ryan or, until yesterday, Mitch Daniels–is the person best positioned to fill it.

Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.

Responses