{"id":20453,"date":"2011-09-17T14:00:22","date_gmt":"2011-09-17T19:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/community\/jesuscreed\/?p=20453"},"modified":"2011-09-17T13:47:59","modified_gmt":"2011-09-17T18:47:59","slug":"sarah-palins-shift","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2011\/09\/17\/sarah-palins-shift\/","title":{"rendered":"Sarah Palin’s Shift"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Here are a few clips from an excellent piece on Sarah Palin by Joshua Green, from The Atlantic:<\/strong><\/a> (HT: LNMM)<\/p>\n

But over the past few months, Palin has begun fortifying her profile by visiting foreign countries and delivering speeches that extol her record as governor, especially on energy, as she did in March to an audience of international business leaders in India. Energy was supposed to be her big issue in the 2008 presidential campaign, but it was overshadowed by her missteps. She seems to be reintroducing herself.And there\u2019s plenty she could reintroduce\u2014much more than the public, which long ago made up its mind about Palin, has any idea she actually achieved. For all the attention she gets, her claim to a role in public life is rarely the focus; more often, it\u2019s dismissed outright. In any discussion of her candidacy, her critics\u2019 first argument for why she couldn\u2019t win, always slapped down like a winning poker hand, is that she quit her governorship. That\u2019s indeed discreditable and harms her chances, but it glides right past the question of what she did\u00a0before<\/em> she quit, and how that has turned out for Alaska. And that\u2019s a more interesting story than you might suppose\u2014a story quite at odds with her popular perception today in Alaska and everywhere else.<\/p>\n

As governor, Palin demonstrated many of the qualities we expect in our best leaders. She set aside private concerns for the greater good, forgoing a focus on social issues to confront the great problem plaguing Alaska, its corrupt oil-and-gas politics. She did this in a way that seems wildly out of character today\u2014by cooperating with Democrats and moderate Republicans to raise taxes on Big Business. And she succeeded to a remarkable extent in settling, at least for a time, what had seemed insoluble problems, in the process putting Alaska on a trajectory to financial well-being. Since 2008, Sarah Palin has influenced her party, and the tenor of its politics, perhaps more than any other Republican, but in a way that is almost the antithesis of what she did in Alaska. Had she stayed true to her record, she might have pointed her party in a very different direction\u2026.<\/p>\n

WHAT HAPPENED TO\u00a0Sarah Palin? How did someone who so effectively dealt with the two great issues vexing Alaska fall from grace so quickly? Anyone looking back at her record can\u2019t help but wonder: How did a popular, reformist governor beloved by Democrats come to embody right-wing resentment?<\/p>\n

A big part of the answer is that the qualities that brought her original successes\u2014the relentlessness, the impulse to settle scores\u2014weren\u2019t nearly so admirable when deployed against less worthy foes than Murkowski and the oil companies. In Alaska, she applied those qualities to fulfilling the promises that got her elected, and in her first year was the most popular governor in the country. \u201cIt was very, very powerful stuff,\u201d Anita Dunn, a Democratic strategist for Knowles, and later for Barack Obama, told me. \u201cShe was this dowdy, but very attractive, person who drew a lot of support from progressive women. She was serious business.\u201d\u2026<\/p>\n

JOHN MCCAIN\u2019S ADVISERS\u00a0say he chose Palin because they believed that the race needed shaking up. But she must have appealed to him for reasons beyond her gender and vivacity. Palin was fresh from major, unexpected victories. She had challenged her own party\u2019s corruption, at grave risk to her career. For this, she was wildly popular. Surely, that brought back McCain\u2019s old battles against George W. Bush and the Republican establishment, and the glory they had won him.<\/p>\n

But McCain and Palin didn\u2019t run as mavericks. Instead, they turned hard right. Palin\u2019s old colleagues were stunned. \u201cThe speech at the Republican convention that made her a star, that was just shocking,\u201d French told me. \u201cShe could have said, \u2018I\u2019ll do for the nation what I did for Alaska: I\u2019ll work with both sides and won\u2019t care where the ideas come from.\u2019 Her background supported that. Instead, they handed her a red-meat script she\u2019s been reading from ever since.\u201d\u2026<\/p>\n

What if history had written a different ending? What if she\u00a0had<\/em> tried to do for the nation what she did for Alaska? The possibility is tantalizing and not hard to imagine. The week after the Republican convention, Lehman Brothers collapsed, and the whole economy suddenly seemed poised to go down with it. Palin might have been the torchbearer of reform, a role that would have come naturally. Everything about her\u2014the aggressiveness, the gift for articulating resentments, her record and even her old allies in Alaska\u2014would once more have been channeled against a foe worth pursuing. Palin, not Obama, might ultimately have come to represent \u201cChange We Can Believe In.\u201d What had\u00a0he<\/em> done that could possibly compare with how she had faced down special interests in Alaska?<\/p>\n

Where true Palinism could be most productively applied is on the issues consuming Washington right now: debt and deficits. Palin\u2019s achievement was to pull Alaska out of a dire, corrupt, enduring systemic crisis and return it to fiscal health and prosperity when many people believed that such a thing was impossible. She did this not by hewing to any ideological extreme but by setting a pragmatic course, applying a rigorous practicality to a set of problems that had seemed impervious to solution. She challenged supposedly inviolable political precepts, and embraced more-nuanced realities: Republicans sometimes must confront powerful business interests; to govern effectively, you have to cooperate with the other side; you sometimes must raise taxes to balance a budget; and doing these things can actually enhance rather than destroy your career, whatever anybody says. True reform\u2014not pandering to the base\u2014established Palin\u2019s broad popularity in Alaska. This approach is sorely absent from most of what happens in Washington these days.<\/p>\n

You\u2019d of course have to account for her flaws, already evident back home, which would undoubtedly have materialized. But had she run as a reformer, these would have amounted to a character trait\u2014not her defining trait\u2014and one shared by many successful politicians. It\u2019s amazing what the media can see fit to forgive in someone who they are convinced is a true maverick. Just look at her running mate!<\/p>\n

But Palin isn\u2019t the type to feel regret. And her choice of a different kind of political celebrity isn\u2019t likely to be her biggest obstacle. Rather, she\u2019ll have to overcome a lack of experience, long odds of winning, and a Republican establishment whose leaders are deeply hostile to the idea of her candidacy. That\u2019s why most people in Washington believe she won\u2019t run. But in Alaska, they\u2019re not so sure. The Palin they knew faced many of the same obstacles, and nothing about her charmed career, from mayor to governor to vice-presidential nominee and finally to global celebrity, suggests to them that she would ever be deterred.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here are a few clips from an excellent piece on Sarah Palin by Joshua Green, from The Atlantic: (HT: LNMM) But over the past few months, Palin has begun fortifying her profile by visiting foreign countries and delivering speeches that extol her record as governor, especially on energy, as she did in March to an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20453","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nSarah Palin's Shift<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Here are a few clips from an excellent piece on Sarah Palin by Joshua Green, from The Atlantic: (HT: LNMM) But over the past few months, Palin has begun\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2011\/09\/17\/sarah-palins-shift\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Sarah Palin's Shift\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Here are a few clips from an excellent piece on Sarah Palin by Joshua Green, from The Atlantic: (HT: LNMM) But over the past few months, Palin has begun\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2011\/09\/17\/sarah-palins-shift\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Jesus Creed\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-09-17T19:00:22+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2011-09-17T18:47:59+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Scot McKnight\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Scot McKnight\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2011\/09\/17\/sarah-palins-shift\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2011\/09\/17\/sarah-palins-shift\/\",\"name\":\"Sarah Palin's Shift\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2011-09-17T19:00:22+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2011-09-17T18:47:59+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/5919e847c58ffe6efb5899fb61797252\"},\"description\":\"Here are a few clips from an excellent piece on Sarah Palin by Joshua Green, from The Atlantic: (HT: LNMM) But over the past few months, Palin has begun\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2011\/09\/17\/sarah-palins-shift\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2011\/09\/17\/sarah-palins-shift\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/2011\/09\/17\/sarah-palins-shift\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Sarah Palin’s Shift\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/\",\"name\":\"Jesus Creed\",\"description\":\"Scot McKnight on Jesus and orthodox faith in the 21st century\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/jesuscreed\/#\/schema\/person\/5919e847c58ffe6efb5899fb61797252\",\"name\":\"Scot McKnight\",\"description\":\"Scot McKnight is a recognized authority on the New Testament, early Christianity, and the historical Jesus. 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