Has the ‘pitbull in lipstick’ lost the plot to her own soap opera?

SHE had been unknown to all but 680,000 Alaskans until she was first introduced last August by John McCain at a rally in Ohio as his running mate in his bid for the White House.

Within a week, Sarah Palin had become an international sensation with her debut address at the Republican national convention. Within two weeks, she was every liberal’s worst nightmare. Within a month, her faults were graphically revealed and within another month she was a worldwide figure of fun and widely believed to be a major reason for McCain losing to Barack Obama.

Whatever next for the “pitbull in lipstick”? With her characteristically quixotic resignation as governor of Alaska last week, observers are left confused. Even her dwindling band of supporters wonder whether she has lost the plot to her very own soap opera. It certainly looks like more of a shot in the foot than a shot at the presidency in 2012.

By the day of the election last November, Sarah Palin had been transformed from soccer mom nonentity into one of the most divisive figures in recent American history. There was seemingly no middle ground between those who had come to adore her and those on both sides of the Atlantic who believed she represented just about every dark and dangerous element of contemporary America.

In choosing Palin, McCain had hoped to shake up the race. He believed he was picking a fellow reformist with a history of taking on the leadership of her own party – a maverick, if you like. Her gender seemed like a clever riposte to Obama’s race while her social conservatism made her acceptable to a Republican party base that wondered whether McCain was really one of them.

Instead, Palin became an instant cultural and political magnet, attracting some and repelling others. McCain was dragged helplessly and unwittingly into a culture war for which he had little stomach.

Yes, she had been serving as the popular chief executive of a geographically vast if sparsely populated state, having risen to local prominence by taking on Alaska’s corrupt political establishment.

In running for and winning the governorship in 2006, she had promised (and had begun to deliver) reforms of the state’s relationship with Washington and with the oil companies that dominated its economy. But, as far as anyone knew, she held fairly conventional conservative views by American standards these days: pro-gun, pro-life, anti-tax. True, it was widely known that she had also chosen to proceed with her pregnancy after discovering the child had Down’s syndrome – a discovery that, in America, very often leads parents to opt for an abortion. But she had not sought to change Alaskan policy in that area. She was, therefore, a reformer with social conservative leanings, not vice versa.

But this was not how Palin was received. She was assigned every view and position progressives consider unenlightened. “Zealot” and “extremist” were just two of the words commentators in Europe as much as America used to describe her. All sorts of views were ascribed to her whether she actually held them or not, from wanting rape victims to pay for their own medical examinations to independence for Alaska, to the war in Iraq being divinely sanctioned by the Almighty himself.

Her personal life came under withering assault as well.

Palin’s capacity to function as a senior politician while raising five children was repeatedly questioned – frequently by those who would never dare to express such views about a female candidate whose opinions were more congenial to them. Her teenage daughter’s pregnancy was splattered all over the front pages. Some even suggested her youngest child was actually her daughter’s instead, and that she had participated in a bizarre cover-up.

Palin became the embodiment of every dark fantasy ever held about the views of evangelical Christians and women who do not associate themselves with contemporary feminism. Concern for clarity and truth went out the window.

Some criticisms of Palin were perfectly fair. She had zero experience in foreign or defence policy – beyond being able to see Russia from Alaska! Running with a 72-year-old presidential candidate with a history of cancer, this was no small matter. She performed embarrassingly badly in some interviews too, but this didn’t adequately explain the violent hostility she generated.

Rather, the entire episode had the feel of a kind of manic outburst; it was triggered by a false, or at least partial, understanding of who Palin was. Once it began, there was no stopping or controlling it.

The most visceral reactions came from her fellow women. How dare a woman embrace traditionalism in the name of egalitarianism? It was all so over-the-top it was hard not to see the attempt to destroy Sarah Palin by rushing to paint her as a backwoods extremist as a sign of desperation.

At the other end of the political spectrum there was a similarly hysterical response to the Palin phenomenon. Her touching life story, her folksy way of speaking and her gut-level appeal to small town America exercised tremendous power over many conservatives. They too chose to paint in the gaps in Palin’s political profile with their own wishful assumptions. They protested too much when their Joan of Arc came in for justified criticism.

Frankly, though, the actual Sarah Palin – as opposed to the Sarah Palin of people’s fantasies or nightmares – was not as rightwing as some hoped – or feared. She was what she said she was – a mum who had risen from town mayor to governor of an atypical state who held views that, in America (or rural parts of Europe, for that matter) are not that remarkable.

WHAT is different between us and them, though, is that in America cultural populism has greater political potency. Americans are happy to celebrate others’ success more than us but they resent intellectual arrogance more too.

Such populism, though, put her at odds with America’s elite whose initial suspicion of her deepened into outright loathing as the campaign progressed. This product of the other America – the America where physical prowess and moral constancy are given a higher place than intellectual achievement – appeared to them frankly dangerous. And the more she stressed these qualities – making constant references to basketball, for instance – the more brutish she appeared to the residents of Jamestown – Washington DC’s Dublin 4.

For two weeks or so, the polls moved markedly in McCain’s direction, as it seemed his running mate was something genuinely new in American politics: a lower middle-class woman who had an uncanny ability to speak the language of ordinary Americans. As election day neared, though, the focus – rightly – turned once again to the essential Obama v McCain choice. So, if there was a Palin effect, it was actually a rather modest one.

Still, anyone who has the ability to knock Michael Jackson off the top slot on CNN must have a certain power. At this point in time, though, it’s hard not to believe that the media’s fascination is with the political equivalent of a slow motion car crash occurring before our eyes. Would there be the same interest in her misstep if she was a man? Has she taken a misstep because she is not a man? Take your pick.