Memoir Is Palin’s Payback to McCain Campaign
By MICHIKO KAKUTANI
Books of the Times
Published: November 14, 2009
GOING ROGUE: An American Life
By Sarah Palin
413 pp. HarperCollins. $28.99
“Going Rogue,” the title of Sarah Palin’s erratic new memoir, comes from a phrase used by a disgruntled McCain aide to describe her going off-message during the campaign: among other things, for breaking with the campaign over its media strategy, its decision to pull out of Michigan and for speaking out about reports that the Republican Party had spent more than $150,000 on fancy designer duds for her and her family. In fact, the most sustained and vehement barbs in this book are directed not at Democrats or liberals or the press, but at the McCain campaign. The very campaign that plucked her out of Alaska, anointed her the G.O.P.’s vice presidential nominee and made her one of the most talked about women on the planet — someone who could command a reported $5 million for writing this book.
In what reads like payback for McCain aides’ disparaging comments about her in the wake of the ticket’s loss to Barack Obama, Ms. Palin depicts the McCain campaign as overscripted, defeatist, disorganized and dunder-headed — slow to shift focus from the Iraq war to the cratering economy , insufficiently tough on Mr. Obama and contradictory in its media strategy. She also claims that the campaign billed her nearly $50,000 for “having been vetted” . The vetting, which was widely criticized in the press as being cursory and rushed, was, she insists, “thorough” : they knew “exactly what they’re getting.”
(More here.)
Books of the Times
Published: November 14, 2009
GOING ROGUE: An American Life
By Sarah Palin
413 pp. HarperCollins. $28.99
“Going Rogue,” the title of Sarah Palin’s erratic new memoir, comes from a phrase used by a disgruntled McCain aide to describe her going off-message during the campaign: among other things, for breaking with the campaign over its media strategy, its decision to pull out of Michigan and for speaking out about reports that the Republican Party had spent more than $150,000 on fancy designer duds for her and her family. In fact, the most sustained and vehement barbs in this book are directed not at Democrats or liberals or the press, but at the McCain campaign. The very campaign that plucked her out of Alaska, anointed her the G.O.P.’s vice presidential nominee and made her one of the most talked about women on the planet — someone who could command a reported $5 million for writing this book.
In what reads like payback for McCain aides’ disparaging comments about her in the wake of the ticket’s loss to Barack Obama, Ms. Palin depicts the McCain campaign as overscripted, defeatist, disorganized and dunder-headed — slow to shift focus from the Iraq war to the cratering economy , insufficiently tough on Mr. Obama and contradictory in its media strategy. She also claims that the campaign billed her nearly $50,000 for “having been vetted” . The vetting, which was widely criticized in the press as being cursory and rushed, was, she insists, “thorough” : they knew “exactly what they’re getting.”
(More here.)
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