WSJ Book Review: Going Rogue

The book review of Sarah Palin's memoir by Melanie Kirkpatrick for the The Wall Street Journal seems to us to be, on the whole, a fair and balanced one. Ms. Kirkpatrick's main criticism of the book is that that the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee doesn't devote enough of her memoir to political issues. But with the subtitle An American Life, should anyone be surprised or disappointed that Going Rogue is more of a personal memoir than a political one? We recommend that policy wonks go to Sarah Palin's Facebook Notes page and read the posts there, most of which deal with the issues of the day. As for the issues that John McCain and Sarah Palin ran on in 2008, which Ms. Kirkpatrick laments aren't given much space this book, she should consult McCain, because they were his policy positions, and Sarah Palin didn't have much, if any, say in developing them.

On the positive side, Melanie Kirkpatrick commends Mrs. Palin for writing...

"...with sensitivity and affection about her gay college roommate, and she confesses her anguish when she found out that she was carrying a baby with Down syndrome. That experience, she says, helped her to understand why a woman might be tempted to have an abortion. This is not the prejudiced, dim-witted ideologue of the popular liberal imagination."

The reviewer also opines that the 2008 Republican VP candidate wasn't as harsh with the McCain campaign as she could have been:

If anything, she is too gentle on the staffers who kept her out of the loop and under wraps. She is certainly too gentle on the man at the top of the ticket who let them get away with it. She has hardly a critical word to say about John McCain, whose appearances in the book are surprisingly few.

The mistakes started on day one. The McCain communications team had not compiled the usual press-briefing guides, she writes, with the result that the national media had "zero information" on her or her record in Alaska. Moreover, her "family, friends, and political associates were under strict instructions not to talk to the media." She wasn't even allowed to speak to her home-state press, which was very friendly.

But those who have followed Alaska politics know that the amicable relationship between Sarah Palin and the press in her state quickly became an antagonistic one after election day 2008, and the national media, which had already savaged her, just got nastier in its treatment of this woman:

Mrs. Palin's veep candidacy ignited fury on the left and much skewed reporting in the mainstream media. It is probably too much to hope that a book that begins at the Right to Life booth at the Alaska State Fair will inspire her critics to read on. But if they do, they'll find themselves in the company of a woman whose views are more nuanced than they were portrayed to be during the campaign.

You can read the full Journal review of Going Rogue here.

- JP