Stacy McCain: Meeting Mr. Palin (Updated)

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Stacy McCain interviews Todd Palin for The American Spectator. Excerpts:

Todd Palin is no whiner -- a former oil-rig worker who has proven his toughness by winning the 2,000-mile "Iron Dog" snowmobile race four times -- and he seems mainly interested in pointing out how little credit his wife has gotten for her accomplishments during her truncated tenure as Alaska's governor. He talks at length about her success in securing an agreement to build a natural gas pipeline from the North Slope down through Canada to the "lower 48," to name just one notable achievement.

In fact, Todd can talk Alaska politics and energy issues with such a thorough mastery of details that he could easily be mistaken for a think-tank analyst, except that he's obviously not the sort of neurasthenic geek one usually finds in those policy-wonk jobs. He's a red-blooded hands-on kind of guy, and is proud to point out that he acted as general contractor in building the latest addition to the Palin property, a two-story structure that includes a state-of-the-art TV studio that Sarah uses for her appearances as a Fox News contributor.

He emphasizes that his wife began her political ascent with "in-your-face local politics," where the interaction between Sarah and her Wasilla constituents was direct and personal. The same kind of "in-your-face" quality characterized the recent Republican primary in which Palin's endorsement of Miller (who supported her in her 2006 gubernatorial campaign) was seen as the key to the Tea Party-backed insurgent's upset of Sen. Lisa Murkowski. Many have portrayed that race as the byproduct of a personal feud between Palin and Murkowski, but Todd disavows any such animosity, noting that the two women were often allies in the past.

Professionally, I'm obliged to mention speculation about Sarah's plans for 2012, but Todd says his wife is currently focused on the upcoming mid-term congressional elections, now less than nine weeks away. And after November? I wasn't taking notes and my memory is notoriously dodgy, so it's possible that Todd's answer was, "We'll see."

Or maybe he didn't say that. A good reporter never burns his sources.

Read Stacy's full profile of Todd Palin here.

h/t roy y

Update: Stacy follows up at The Other McCain:

And be careful, Dave Weigel — you wouldn’t want to be “limp, impotent and gutless.”

Sometimes the best stories are the ones you can’t report. Sometimes if you’ll just talk to people — put down the notebook, turn off the recorder — instead of interviewing them, you can get a much better idea of who they really are.

Something else: Try to have some regard for the humanity of your sources. It’s worth noting that, at least at this point, the Palins are private citizens and are not obligated to speak to the press at all. So if Todd Palin is kind enough to invite me out to the house — when he could just as easily have spent those two hours doing something he enjoyed — should I repay his hospitality by playing “gotcha”?

C’mon, Dave: Remember how you felt when all that JouroList stuff was hitting the fan? That’s how the Palins have felt every single day for the past two years.

- JP