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Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has apparently decided that the best place to focus on her state’s business is right here in Indiana. This should come as no surprise to John Mellencamp, who finds that Indiana is the best place to focus on his blues-rock music; nor to Reggie Miller, who always seemed to think that it was a good place to focus on basketball.
But governing Alaska? To be honest, that’s a little bit of a stretch for me. It’s just too far away. But Palin doesn’t seem to think so, and that’s why she may (or may not) be attending the Vanderburgh County Right to Life Dinner in Evansville on April 16.
I say may or may not because her spokeswoman, Meg Stapleton, told MSNBC’s Norah O’Donnell that Gov. Palin would “not be agreeing to any political events before April 20,” which is when Alaska’s legislative session ends. And that makes sense, or at least it would, if she weren’t in the midst of a major PR campaign meant to convey how “focused on Alaska” and unconcerned with her political future she is.
That, at least, is the explanation for why she canceled her appearance at a joint Senate-House GOP fundraising dinner as far away as June. The groups had to walk back their press releases and replace her with the far less enticing Newt Gingrich.
Don’t get me wrong — I think Indiana should be honored to be at the top of the list of a former vice presidential candidate’s places to go and “vacation” (read: campaign). And I’m the last person who thinks any amount of importance should be placed on yet another Washington dinner or fundraiser.
However, the question remains, why the mixed messages? Why can she not even consider political functions until after the state session ends because she’s too busy to focus, yet attend a political function during that very legislative session?
I smell no conspiracy, and I’m not making a mountain out of a mole hill. I find this to be a legitimate and persistent problem for Palin and her handlers. During the 2008 presidential campaign, she had more than her fair share of public relations faux pas, and it did her significant damage, no matter how much her supporters insisted that we should ignore them.
Whether it was something frivolous such as responding to the question of what newspapers or magazines she liked to read with “all of them,” or something much more serious like presenting three to four different stories for why she spent over $200,000 of the cash-strapped GOP ticket’s money on her clothes, or completely denying some very reality-based concerns about her back taxes and state money spent on leisure travel, she was never quite able to get a handle on her message.
This was all brushed aside as trumped up stories by a media that was “out to get her,” and plenty of people, including Palin herself, were happy to believe just that. But she still had to pay those non-existent taxes, and she did after the campaign was over.
Politicians lie. They lie all the time, about all sorts of things. The difference between Gov. Palin and her contemporaries is, most modern politicians have learned to finesse their message and keep a story straight. Gov. Palin has not, and instead spends a lot of her time flatly denying stories and claims that really, truly did happen.
She often very clearly wants to have things both ways, such as this current effort to stay committed to her state while obviously campaigning for the 2012 race at the same time. That’s why she and her spokespeople can claim that she is doing one thing while she has something completely different written down on her schedule.
Gov. Palin and her allies are very fond of saying that the media treated her negatively during the campaign, and they are right. But that doesn’t mean the damage wasn’t largely self-inflicted. And so long as she continues to use that as an excuse for why she did poorly, she’ll likely keep making these strange, conflicted choices in message and purpose. And that doesn’t bode well for her chances in 2012. Or for Alaska.
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