Melissa Clouthier: The Humanizing of Sarah Palin

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Though Sarah Palin's Going Rogue book tour still has a couple of stops remaining on the itinerary, it's safe to say that it has been an overwhelming success. Alaska's former governor has sold over a million copies of her memoir, and she's been changing some long-held perceptions of her.

The Democrats and their captive media had, through a non-stop campaign of attacking her, successfully dehumanized Sarah Palin and made her into a cartoon character of their own design. But her Great American Road Trip and a series of interviews intended to promote her book have given the 2008 GOP vice presidential candidate something even more valuable than the considerable royalties she will reap from the sales of Going Rogue. Sarah Palin has her humanity back.

Melissa Clouthier explains:

The bar was set so low for Sarah Palin, that she's surprising everyone, including the press. People are even rethinking the Katie Couric interview and Ms. Palin made a really good point: Why not release all the tape, unedited and uncut? If Sarah Palin comes off as such a complete moron, it should harm Sarah Palin worse, not make her look better. A win-win for the left and the press, but Katie Couric won't release the tape. Too bad, it makes Katie Couric look more like a partisan hack, if that were possible.

Over the next year, I'm guessing that Ms. Palin will just be not scary. In the mean time, she's hopefully boning up on foreign policy, philosophy, etc. There are hints in her speeches that she's doing just that.

The press and left will still call her stupid. They did that with Ronald Reagan (doddering grandpa) and Gerald Ford (fumbling moron) and George W. Bush (blathering idiot). Why? Because anyone who disagrees with leftist conventional wisdom is, by definition, stupid. So, once again, the bar will be set so low, even a McChimpyhaliburtan can leap it.

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By over-selling intellectualism and reducing enemies to mindless dunces, the press and left are themselves, the caricature.

Sarah Palin is turning into a real, fleshed-out human being. Now that she's established a bare minimum, she can turn toward policy questions. And she has. She has been a fearless critic or encourager depending on President Obama's policy choices. And if the President keeps making poor choices, her criticism will look genius.

The Left and its media lapdogs, by creating the charicture of Sarah Palin that they did, only managed to help The Arctic Fox establish a solid core of adoring fans, according to Clouthier. Now Sarah Palin is building on that base and changing perceptions about her. She surprised Oprah Winfrey, charmed Barbara Walters and even showed a room full of hardened media types at their Gridiron Dinner that she can play their game and win.

Now Sarah Palin is using Facebook in much the same way that Ronald Reagan used radio -- to stake out solid policy positions on the issues of the day and to point out that the emperor has no clothes. We are even seeing some of Reagan's wit, self-effacing good humor and boundless optimism in her. In the war for hearts and minds across America, Sarah Palin is winning her battles, day by day.

- JP

Campaign role changed how Palin was perceived

Sarah Palin's attorney Thomas V. Van Flein, in an interview with The Washington Post this week, said Gov. Palin's assigned role as a pit bull with lipstick in the 2008 presidential campaign altered the way she was perceived back home in Alaska:

He said Alaska lawmakers and residents were accustomed to a bipartisan governor, and were taken by surprise by much of the criticism Palin aimed at Obama and Biden during the campaign.

"Lines were drawn. McCain was to play the role of statesman and Palin was to play the role of a partisan," he said. "She didn't change but the people around her, their perspective of her changed."

Van Flein said Sarah Palin is resigning because of the combative relationship between the governor and the state legislature and because of the distractions and costs of defending herself against a series of ethics complaints.

The Alaska lawyer said that while Gov. Palin has no new job offers, she has "received hundreds of credible offers since the campaign, none of which she has accepted or pursued, with the exception of her book deal."

Among the offers were media jobs, including offers to host a talk show, and requests for her to appear in Hollywood productions, he said, but would not be more specific.

Van Flein said although he hopes Palin will allow herself to take time to rest and spend more time with her family, "she is a woman with a lot of energy. We'll see."

- JP