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"There have been so many things written and said through mainstream media that have not been accurate, and it will be nice through an unfiltered forum to get to speak truthfully about who we are and what we stand for and what Alaska is all about."
— Sarah Palin
Sarah Palin has an image problem. Anyone watching the presidential campaign could see that. Now that she's slated to produce a memoir, she has an image problem, a re-imaging problem and an image-of-the-re-imaging problem. In short, she has to address the mixed signals she previously sent, while figuring out how to present her past (memoir) in such a way that it serves future electoral trials (memoir-as-mythmaking), while controlling the perception of how the memoir itself was put together. That's a lot of problems.
Campaign difficulties linger in memory. She pegged herself as an agent of change while advancing the same economic and international policies of the previous eight years. She demonized socialism and redistribution of wealth, yet governed a state that relies heavily on federal earmarks and evenly distributes oil revenue profits to every citizen. While promoting family values and abstinence-only education, her daughter bore obvious abdominal evidence of engaging in unsafe, pre-marital sex. And of course, while saying she was just an average American hockey mom, she and her husband racked up over $150,000 in clothing bills at stores like Saks Fifth Avenue, Atelier, Macy's, etc.
So there's that to address. That's a difficult enough task to begin with. With media attention focused on how the book itself will be produced, it's even harder. Because, of course, Palin's rumored to have been offered a lot of money for it: "News reports this winter suggested Palin was pursuing an $11 million advance. She called that figure 'laughable' in January but has never provided another." It's not laughable. While Bill Clinton's rumored payday for My Life was $12 million, it turned out that he was paid $15 million. Palin's status as a divisive political figure but also a breakthrough figure for women ensures that her book will enjoy a comparably large audience and probably deserves that kind of payment.
But, in writing, she will be obliged to preemptively address fallout about that payment. She's stated that she will donate the money to charity, but the stain of having Republican National Committee representatives sent to her home to "repossess" $150,000+ in clothing undoubtedly will spread to this endeavor. Having to explain contradictions in your own behavior makes for rough work even in the tamest of reminiscences, but Palin might feel compelled to address future questions about those contradictions within the text.
The end product, then, could be a meta-narrative both on herself and on the perception of herself. Consider her charge from the Republican National Convention: "Listening to [Obama] speak, it's easy to forget that this is a man who has authored two memoirs but not a single major law or reform." Subtract one memoir, and that's a charge that can be flung at her, which requires some preemptive engagement on her part. A degree of "memoir as memoir" plus "memoir as anticipated counter-critique" could make the text torturous.
That last word naturally brings us to the problem of mid-career memoir and also to her former running mate, John McCain. Before accepting his party's nomination for president, McCain had already written two memoirs (including other books that reflected his personal story). In his case, they described a kind of closed circuit. Faith of My Fathers, recounts a full career arc. McCain praises the conduct of his grandfather and father, then details his service record and the nightmare of his torture. When he wrote the book, however, obviously all that had ended. No matter how favorably or unfavorably he recast the events in it, it wouldn't affect a coming naval promotion, because he'd resigned his commission.
Obviously McCain didn't mind receiving a future electoral benefit from the publication of those memoirs, but the situation he described was immutable. Political memoirs, however, often try to put a conceptual stamp on a process in constant flux. They're written retrospectively and prospectively: the commentary on the past is framed in such a way to provide a digestible anecdote that informs future attitudes and tactics.
This is what will doubtless make Palin's memoir both instantly indispensable and historically disposable. In the case of the former, we should read it to figure out where she intends to go from here. Journalists and bloggers will buy thousands of copies to attempt political divination. How she addresses past paradoxical comments or dissonant positions will presage how she'll attempt to rationalize seemingly irreconcilable positions in the future.
In the case of the latter, it will signify only her aims at the time. As a document of her career, it will probably be a poor one. America has a wonderful history of memoirs, but those that emerged in the middle of a person's growth are often only satisfying to the generation that grew along with the historical personality. Ulysses S. Grant, William Tecumseh Sherman and Henry Adams all wrote beautiful and iconic memoirs, ones that deserve to be read today, but they did so while nearing life's terminus. Imagine what each might have said before they reached the decline of their own arcs. Grant might have lamented a conduct less dignified and courtly; Sherman might have bewailed a lack of business acumen; Adams might have speculated about a future political appointment to give his life greater purpose. None would have evinced the same reflection we now applaud.
More importantly, all those memoirs still have huge gaps in them. Adams omitted decades of his life and, despite turning an acerbic eye toward his own shortcomings, failed to question whether that acerbity denied him the opportunities that might have enriched it. Sherman gave his post-war career a pass, and Grant didn't even bother with his (arguably) disastrous presidency. Even looking back, we innately want to give the hard stuff a miss and elevate the nobler things we did. Even if we're talented — some might say sublime — craftsmen like Adams, Grant and Sherman, we'll feel an ineluctable need to obfuscate something.
In a sense, that's what makes the Palin memoir so interesting. She has to reconcile so many self-imposed political and conceptual dichotomies. She's got to burnish herself and her record in such a way as to create future campaign soundbites and future campaign anecdotes. And she's got to dodge some trying topics by engaging others with enough aplomb that the omissions aren't so glaring. But what of the omissions? Will they eventually matter that much? Will they eventually be addressed?
It's a book to buy and read with feverish, fastidious political interest. At the same time, it's also a book to devour just to see everything that will not be there — and, perhaps, never will be.
Message Edited by L_Monty on 05-14-2009 02:29 PM
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Talk about someone who 15 mins was over 3 hours ago.
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Great post, Monty, your analysis is spot on!
I'd say the problems Palin faces about addressing contradictions are likely to be minimal in one significant quarter. The amount of hypocrisy in the Republican movement, not just changing a position, but flat out contradicting recorded statements time and time again, just doesn't mean much to her average fan. Or the Republican establishment. Or the Republican media.
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