Wild About Writing

I’ve been thinking about Sarah Palin’s weird announcement about stepping down as Governor of Alaska — and her follow-up Facebook posting about leaving “for a higher calling.”

The best I can say for her is she’s “one of a kind.” There’s no counterpart for her in Canadian politics, nor in the more volatile bear pit of U.S. politics.

But she’s got lots of supporters, as irrational as they may seem to the rest of us.

Check out some of the comments on her Facebook Wall.

“We are behind you and will support you to the end,” one woman writes. Another opines: “We (Americans) need you to unite and lead us to overcome the Obamans who are dragging us into an abyss.”

There’s also a few detractors. But there’s no doubt that the folksy, irreverent (except for religion) and striking lady from Alaska generates a fantastic response from a certain section of the electorate.

So what does Sarah Palin want? To be President, of course. Well, duh.

My hunch is that she decided the Governorship, with its real life responsibilities and the accountability that it imposes on her, has become a big nuisance.

Instead of meeting the challenges she faces head on, proving her mettle and working to set right her mistakes (remember what the ethics board had to say?) she’s decided to go out and run for the White House.

Plus, all the attention will help her cash in on the book she’s writing (supposedly) for Harper Collins.

There’s already a couple of books about her. Neither are big sellers, but Trailblazer: An Intimate Biography of Sarah Palin, will get a boost from the weekend’s happenings. It’s by Lorenzo Benet, an editor of People magazine. She’s enjoyed a close relationship with People, to which she has given a number of exclusives. And she’s no fool — she knows you reach more pliable voters via a celebrity mag than through the New York Times.

I’ve carefully read the statement she issued last Friday. It’s so full of vacuous nonsense that it’s hard to comment on it rationally. And therein lies her strength — and danger.

Her strength is that she attracts attention like lightning. Her danger is that she attracts attention like lightning. Example:  The Huffington Post, one of the best news aggregators on the web, now devotes a dedicated page to her antics.

Does the Republican Party really want a candidate who is so impetuous, so unpredictable, so apparently ill-informed as this woman?

Or will her candidacy set off the most paralyzing fight in the history of the GOP, split the party up the middle and along the edges, and pave the way for Barack Obama to carry every state in the Union (yes, even Alaska) in 2012?

To most Canadians, the Sarah Palin Show is just a sideshow, another example of how the stupid, the irrelevant and the irrational increasingly dominates the tone and character of American politics.

Thank God she’s not one of ours!