Going Rogue: An American Life (102 page)
Read Going Rogue: An American Life Online
Authors: Sarah Palin,Lynn Vincent
Tags: #General, #Autobiography, #Political, #Political Science, #Biography And Autobiography, #Biography, #Science, #Contemporary, #History, #Non-Fiction, #Politics, #Sarah, #USA, #Vice-Presidential candidates - United States, #Women politicians, #Women governors, #21st century history: from c 2000 -, #Women, #Autobiography: General, #History of the Americas, #Women politicians - United States, #Palin, #Alaska, #Personal Memoirs, #Vice-Presidential candidates, #Memoirs, #Central government, #Republican Party (U.S.: 1854- ), #Governors - Alaska, #Alaska - Politics and government, #Biography & Autobiography, #Conservatives - Women - United States, #U.S. - Contemporary Politics
Chapter Five
The Thumpin’
seem to
basically nicerpeople,
they have
demonstrated time and again
they have
sleills of
celery.
leind ofpeople who’d stop to
you
aflat,
would somehow
to setyour car on
I would
to
them
a Cuisinart, let alone
economy.
Republicans, on
other hand, would know
tofix your
wouldn’t
to stop
they’d want to
on time for
Ugly Pants
at
country club.
-DAVE BARRY
Backinthecampaignseasonof2004someAlaskanshad
suggested that I challenge incumbent Lisa Murkowski in the U.S. Senate race. The seat was vulnerable because of the nepotism issue, and the GOP would have trouble holding on to it. As always, I polled my family. Everybody thought it was a decent idea, until I asked Track.
“I don’t want you to run for U.S. Senate, Mom,” said Track.
“Who would be our hockey manager?”
It sounds trivial now, but … who
would
be the hockey manager? At that point in his life, having an involved mom was more important to him-and to me-than having a mom with a powerful position in Washington, D.C. So it was a pretty easy deci
sion not to run.
•
•
SARAH
PALIN
I remember telling that to the same local radio host who gave me a hard time when I tried to make it to Track’s boot camp graduation four years later. He treated it as if that were the phoniest excuse he’d ever heard.
“You’re lying,” he said. “You’re chicken to run.”
“Why would I lie about that?” I said. “If anything, admitting the real reason just opens me up to more criticism.
It
sure isn’t for political gain.”
There was no need to validate myself with the radio host, but he left the impression with listeners that women couldn’t do more than one thing at a time. He wanted to portray me as a too-simple mom who was not serious about serving the public. He didn’t understand that there is no greater service than mothering. I always admired Karen Hughes, President Bush’s former adviser, because she left the White House so she could be close to her teenage son and spend quality time with him. At a ctossroads, she was candid and courageous enough to tell the public she wanted to teach him how to drive. She had the right priorities.
Now, five years later, I found myself at a crossroads. On November 5, 2008, I
home to a political landscape
that had permanently changed. The VP race had been an incredible, extraordinary ride, and I was still the same governor who had enjoyed rremendous-and humbling-citizen support just sixty-eight days earlier. But that had all changed on August 29, 2008, when John McCain and I teamed up to challenge a charismatic political figure who inspired worshipful loyalty from his supporters.
The fallout was immediate: the governor’s office was inundated with frivolous ethics complaints. Literally scores of Freedom ofInformation Act (FOIA) and Public Records Act requests rolled in, generating thousands of pages that required hours of work to process. Reporters abandoned actual reporting in favor of tabloidiz
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