"Going Rogue"

Posted by Alaska_Politics

Posted: November 17, 2009 - 11:20 am

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From Erika Bolstad in Washington and Sean Cockerham in Anchorage --

Sarah Palin's book is out this morning and available at booksellers throughout Anchorage and nationwide. Friends and foes are busy scrutinizing every word of the 413-page HarperCollins book, a compilation af anecdotes, political prescriptions and score settling.

We're going through the book and will be posting excerpts of it throughout the day on the blog.

Are you reading it? Join in. But keep it on-point and keep it civil.

Our Alaska Newsreader has a roundup of Palin-related news today.

Now to the book:

Page 18

Palin writes about how she and her sisters stayed out of trouble except when hanging out with their brother Chuck. "Like the time he and I snowmachined down an empty dirt road and got pulled over by one of the few state troopers in our part of Alaska. It was Christmas Day; we were out in the middle of nowhere, a couple of kids on a snowmachine up against a big dude with a gun and a badge. I couldn't help wondering about his priorities, if he really didn't have more important things to do, like catching a bad guy, or maybe helping a poor old lady haul in her firewood for the night. Looking back, maybe that was my first brush with the skewed priorities of government."

Page 18

Palin describes her diet: “I love meat. I eat pork chops, thick bacon burgers, and the seared fatty edges of a medium-well-done steak. But I especially love moose and caribou.”

Page 38

Palin describes her first kiss with Todd, her future husband, and her dismay when she learns he told teammates that she “didn’t even know how to kiss.” “My young, crushed spirit learned a lesson about guys that day: even the good ones can act like jerks.”

Page 41

Palin describes her championship basketball team. “Everything I ever needed to know, I learned on the basketball court. And to this day, my right ankle is a knobby and misshapen thing, a daily reminder of pushing through pain.”

Page 65

Palin gets in a dig at “community organizers,” the job President Barack Obama held early in his career. “But Valley residents, like other Alaskans, are not “master-planned-community" kind of people. We are extremely independent, no community organizers necessary.”

Page 70

Palin describes what drove her to run for mayor. “As every Iditarod musher knows, if you’re not the lead dog, the view never changes.”

Page 76 – 77

Palin objects to the characterization that she sought to ban books while mayor of Wasilla, saying she brought the issue up with the local librarian simply because book banning had been in the news and she was curious what the librarian’s book selection policy was.
Palin wrote that she queried the librarian what would happen if a mom came in and didn’t like a book near the children’s section.

“The next thing I know, a Frontiersman reporter wrote a story suggesting that I was on the road to banning books."

Page 81

Palin explains why she never ran for the Alaska Legislature. “I did not think I would do well in a place where you had to scratch disagreeable backs in order to secure a nameplate in the caucus.”

Page 92

Palin recalls her interview with Frank Murkowski, when he was considering who to replace himself with as the junior U.S. Senator from Alaska. “It was then I knew I wasn’t getting the gig. It seemed to me that though he thought me competent enough to make his short list, the father in him felt compelled to protect me from the storm that is national politics.”

Pages 100-102

Palin discusses "Troopergate," the controversy about her former brother-in-law, Trooper Mike Wooten, whom she and others had complained about, and whether she fired Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan when Wooten stayed on the job. She writes about Wooten using a Taser on his stepson, drinking in his patrol car, threatening to hurt her father, and illegally shooting a moose (though Palin doesn't mention that her sister, Molly, then Wooten's wife, was with him on the hunting trip.) She says everyone was relieved when Molly filed for divorce.

"I was asked to comment on my former brother-in-law's actions as a cop -- and I spoke candidly about how unfortunate it was that a few bad apples were perceived as spoiling the whole bunch," Palin writes. "... This sad family episode would later be twisted and used as a political weapon against me and John McCain."

Pages 116-117

Palin describes one of her 2006 opponents in the governor’s race, Andrew Halcro. “Halcro was a wealthy, effete young chap who had taken over his father’s local Avis Rent A Car, and he starred in his own car commercials,” Palin writes. “Later on, during the vice presidential campaign, Halcro – along with the Wasilla town crier mentioned previously, plus the falafel lady Andree McLeod – would be touted as “expert” sources on all things Palin by the national press.”

Page 127

Palin describes meeting with oil executives for the first time, after her election as governor. “I walked into those meetings with coffee in hand, cookies to serve our guests, and thought to myself, Hmmm. You just spent a year trying to kick my ass. I just spent a year trying to kick yours. And now we’re in this room together. Out loud I asked, “Want a cookie?”

Page 135

Palin teases her husband, Todd, about his growing ease at tea parties, including one with First Lady Laura Bush at the White House. “I remember teasing him later – ‘What? Did you chat about your snowmachine suspension?” … Todd was a good sport and awesome First Dude.”

Page 138

Palin recalls the day Piper learns to ride a bike on the grounds of the governors mansion in Juneau. Piper pumps her fist into the air and yells “Yay me!” Palin recalls. “For me, standing there in the sunshine, it was one of those Mom Moments when your heart feels like it just might burst, and I thought, May every little child have an abundance of “Yay, me!” moments.

Page 140

Palin offers her impression of Juneau. She writes that, politically, its reputation was a lot like the movie Animal House with “drinking and bowling, drunken brawls, countless affairs, and garden-variety lunchtime trysts.”

Page 148

Palin responds to criticism for collecting over $18,000 in per diem for meals and incidentals during times she was staying in her Wasilla home. Palin writes that there were plumbing repairs going on at the governor’s mansion in Juneau and she didn’t ask the state to put her up in a pricey hotel or an apartment, only taking the $60 a day for meals.

“I was never paid to sleep in my own home, and I accepted only a meal per diem, despite what some critics would later accuse me of doing.”

Page 160

Palin recalls signing the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act at a ceremony near Fairbanks, but complains that a staffer left the original bill in Juneau. “But we couldn’t cancel. So the bill-signing ceremony turned out to be … well, ceremonial…When the real bill finally arrived in Anchorage, the director had to drive it out to Wasilla, and, as with most significant events in my life, I signed it near my kitchen table.”

Page 172

Palin writes about briefly considering abortion when she learned that she was pregnant with her son, Trig, as governor. “And for a split second it hit me: I’m out of town. No one knows I’m pregnant. No one would ever have to know. It was a fleeting thought, a sudden understanding of why many women feel pressured to make the ‘problem’ go away.’’

Page 184

Palin has learned she will give birth to a boy with Down syndrome, and is hesitant about telling her other children that she is pregnant. But she keeps telling herself “I still didn’t look pregnant, so figured we still had time.” She decides to write a letter “as though it were from Trig’s creator, the same Creator in whom I had put my trust more than thirty years before.” She complains that during the campaign, it was mocked by a “hostile journalist,” who Palin said describes her as “so self-absorbed that I even wrote a letter ‘in the voice of God.’”

Page 207

When Palin learns her daughter, Bristol, was pregnant, she writes she was “devastated.” “It wasn’t the morality of the situation – what was done was done. It was that I saw her future change in an instant.”

Page 211

When Palin is going through the final vetting as Sen. John McCain’s vice presidential pick, she describes the call she got from the Arizona Republican as not coming as much of a shock. “I certainly didn’t think, Well, of course this would happen. But neither did I think, What an astonishing idea. It seemed more comfortable than that, like a natural progression.”

Page 214-217

Palin is surprised to her the McCain campaign already knows her daughter is pregnant. She tells them she has nothing to hide, but confesses to an old secret about her academic record. “It made me nervous and sick to my stomach, but I felt obliged to confess that D in the college course 22 years before.”

The McCain camp has weightier matters in mind, and hired Arthur Culvahouse Jr. to lead her vetting. Palin writes they knew how she had voted as a city commissioner, had her tax returns and were aware of the sermons given by preachers at churches she had formerly attended. “By the time his team of attorneys finished peppering me with questions, I decided that if a person had ever done a single dark and secret think in their lives, Culvahouse’s people would not only find out about it but get eyewitnesses, photos, and blood samples.”

Page 217

Palin describes her views on evolution, saying she believes in evidence for “microevolution,” which she defines as species change happening incrementally over time.

“But I didn’t believe in the theory that human beings – thinking, loving beings – originated from fish that sprouted legs and crawled out of the sea. Or that human beings began as single-celled organisms that developed into monkeys who eventually swung down from the trees.”

Page 236

Describing news media descending on Wasilla after she was chosen as McCain's running mate: "With their editors back in New York and Washington screaming for copy to feed hourly news cycles, they took whatever they could get and weren't too careful about vetting their sources, who included a defeated former opponent, a maniacal blogger, the falafel lady, and the Wasilla town crank."

Page 260-261

During the campaign, Palin returns to Fort Wainwright in Fairbanks to speak to the Stryker Brigade – including her son – that’s about to deploy to Iraq. Her son has asked her not to say “Hooah!” the Army’s rally cry, because he says, “you never say it right.” But Palin asks a commander for the proper pronunciation, and says it anyway. “I took one last look at the Stryker Brigade and grinned, knowing that somewhere amid the troops standing stock still in perfect formation, there was one solder rolling his eyes.”

Page 276

Palin writes about why she didn’t have any specifics when Katie Couric asked her what newspapers and magazines she reads. “It wasn’t that I didn’t want to – or, as some have ludicrously suggested, couldn’t – answer her question; it was that her condescension irritated me.”

Page 306

Palin reflects on her campaign line about Barack Obama “palling around with terrorists.” She writes that McCain headquarters had issued it as an “approved sound bite...and I was happy to be the one to deliver it.”

Page 352

Palin discusses rumors that she and her husband, Todd, were divorcing. “The day in sunny Texas when the divorce rumors were rampant in the tabloids, I watched Todd, tanned and shirtless, take the baby from my arms and walk him back to the ranch house so Trig could nap while I made calls. Seeing Todd’s blue eyes smiling, I chuckled. Dang, I thought. Divorce Todd? Have you seen Todd?"

Page 353

Palin complains of the volume of Freedom of Information Act requests and “baseless” ethics complaints filed against her as governor after returning from the campaign trail.

Palin writes that “the sheer volume of paperwork and legally required responses brought the business of governing the State of Alaska to a grinding halt. “Eventually it overwhelmed us – and was obviously meant to.”

Page 373

Palin blames the "one-sided public discourse" over the ethics complaints for a drop in her Alaska approval ratings from nearly 90 percent to 56 percent. "Slowly and steadily, my record, my administration's efforts, and my family's reputation were shot to hell."

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