Going Rogue...

Last night I finished reading Sarah Palin's Going Rogue.  A few reactions:

• It's certainly no literary masterpiece, and I suspect she'd be quick to agree with that.  I had no problem staying awake while reading it, but I wasn't riveted by either the prose or the content.
  
  
• She's very quick to use her religious beliefs instead of thinking.  By this I mean that you'll find her quite casually attributing an event to God's will (and not thinking it out any further), or justifying a position with by invoking God's desire instead of a thought-out ideology.  Palin invokes Reagan frequently in the book, but Reagan was in fact a very different kind of political animal – he was religious, of course, but his religion was the foundation for his ideology, not the ideology itself.  Palin comes across as having very little ideology beyond her religion and a vague, general sort of Alaskan independence, libertarianism, and scrappiness.  I like the latter elements; the first one scares me.
  
  
• The last ten pages or so were the most interesting part of the entire book.  In this section, she comes closest to offering a vision of what we might expect from her in the future.  I read it closely, as I strongly suspect that Palin will be a factor in our nation's future politics.  I was disappointed, not so much by what's there, but by what's not there.  There is no clear vision, no clear agenda, no clear ideology.  I still know only vaguely what Sarah Palin believes in (other than God) – and I suspect the same thing is true of her.  I don't see a Ronald Reagan or Maggie Thatcher here, but rather a cartoonish copy, without foundation, wrapped in an attractive package.  I wish I could say otherwise.
  
  
• I'm less likely to vote for her now (for any office) than I was before reading the book.  I can still imagine circumstances where I might vote for her as the lesser of two evils.  For example, if one could imagine (say) a 2012 ticket of Obama/Pelosi vs. Palin/Romney, I might well hold my nose and vote the Republican ticket – not so much because I was attracted to it, but because the alternative was so much worse.  But I would certainly not be an enthusiastic supporter of hers.
  
  
• It seems to me unlikely that Palin would actually be able to clinch the Republican ticket in 2012.  Not impossible, but unlikely.  More likely is that she could make a robust run as an independent, like a modern Ross Perot.  I can easily imagine her forming a strong third party with the “tea party” folks as her base.  I can imagine any number of partners for her (Glenn Beck came immediately to mind, though the thought sends shivers of fear through me).  Would such an independent ticket have a chance?  The probabilities are against it; a more likely outcome is a badly split vote on the right, and a unified vote from the liberal opposition – not a pleasant outcome for me.