Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin (11 page)

When she traveled to the state capital in Juneau, Todd became particularly alarmed as he described the “Juneau trance” she fell into: “It's where she believes everything the Juneau-ites tell her.” The Juneau-ites, as Todd called them, were the bureaucrats she swore (and failed) to get rid of before being elected. Naming those he felt most offensive, Todd would say, using one of his favorite expressions, “They are just humping her leg, and she gets all mixed up, she buys it. It's disgusting.” At one point, before Sarah traveled to Juneau, Todd provided me with frantic and detailed instructions.

I found it particularly interesting that even as her husband, Todd lumped himself in the “we're in trouble” category. If she listened to Juneau voices, she'd come home believing Todd's advice suddenly wrongheaded. Finding myself thrust into a bizarre situation, on this trip I became her full-time Juneau babysitter and Todd Palin's double agent.

Especially after Sarah took office, Todd's regular intelligence reports helped us plan ahead. Was this to be a day when Sarah was emotionally up, and we could look forward to being productive? Or was this a day when she was “in a mood”? In the latter case, we'd be looking backward at someone to blame for the state of our daily affairs.

From those early months in 2006 on, we had already learned—no matter her state of mind—to back off and avoid confrontation. In her own words, she'd say, “Man, I hate it when I'm wrong!” More than that, Sarah disliked anyone pointing out when she was wrong.
While I am certainly no psychologist, I believe this aspect of her ego prevented her from admitting mistakes. One time I suggested to her that it is important for people to see her as real and human, not some superwoman whom they'll try to shoot out of the sky. In typical Sarah fashion, when she heard something she didn't want to hear, she changed the subject.

8
 

A Higher Standard

P
aul Riley, Sarah's eighty-plus-year-old Pentecostal minister in Wasilla, once offered his spiritual advice by suggesting that she reread the story of Queen Esther in the Bible. As the story goes, King Ahasuerus of Persia wished to find a fair young virgin to replace his deposed queen. A beautiful girl named Esther, brought before him, “pleaseth the king” most, and he “set the royal crown upon her head and made her his queen.” From that perch, Esther concealed her Jewish heritage, for Jews were Persian enemies. But when her people were threatened with annihilation, she revealed her identity and convinced the king to spare the Jews while permitting them to fight against their other enemies. This event is celebrated annually in the Feast of Purim. Assuming personal risk, Esther is famously quoted as saying, “If I die, I die.”

Identifying with this perceived role model, on at least two occasions Sarah invoked identical language. The first of these instances was in June 2009 when introducing right-wing radio host Michael Reagan (and President Ronald Reagan's adoptive son) at a political gathering: “So I join you in speaking up and asking the questions and taking action, and here at home in my beloved Alaska, I just say, politically speaking, if I die, I die.” The following month, when asked on
Good Morning America
why she resigned as governor sixteen months early,
she replied, “I said before I stood in front of the mike the other day, you know, politically speaking,
if I die, I die
. So be it.”

Many of Sarah's followers believed these biblical parallels to be 100 percent true: God had summoned Sarah Palin to lead an Esther-like mission to save fellow Alaskans from self-interested cronyism and bring down their foes.

Demonstrating her own belief in a divine calling, in June 2006, Sarah wrote about an “awesome” service at Wasilla Bible Church that spoke to her:

On another occasion, while Sarah drove us from Kenai to Homer in her black Volkswagen Jetta, she said, “Frank, isn't it weird that God called me to the two most corrupt professions? Media and politics.”

Embedded within a list of prayer items, Sarah apparently endorsed another part of Esther's mission as well:

In contrast to some who wear their religion in public, I never saw Sarah read or carry a Bible on any of our frequent travels together. Nor did she cite verses. We didn't hold prayers before meals or prior to meetings. Only once did we pray together, and that was during a moment of deep distress. For reasons I cannot recall, Sarah felt in early 2006 that everything was going wrong. She came into my office and spoke of problems and uncertainties, then abruptly said, “Y'know, we should pray.”

Sarah and I bowed heads, folded hands, and sat in silence for a few
awkward moments until I realized that she expected me to lead. I finally said, “God, I know You can see what we're going through; we need Your wisdom, God, for what we can see, and what we can't.” The prayer continued, but more remarkable to me than what we said was Sarah's emotional invocation of “Lord Jesus” over and over. The desperate and heartfelt moment convinced me that despite Sarah's lacking elements of forgiveness and charity, her faith had deep roots. Confirming this sincerity, she often echoed a firm belief in the literal teachings of the Bible, explaining her creationist, pro-life, anti-gay-marriage fundamentalism.

These theocratic underpinnings influenced the campaign on matters large and small. Due to other campaign obligations and unable to attend an October 2006 gubernatorial debate organized by the
Anchorage Daily News
and British Petroleum, Sarah took a public relations hit. In summing up her frustration, she explained to a long list of supporters:
“BP put an empty ‘no show' chair anyway to make a fool out of me. And Larry Persilly, the moderator, was loving it.”
Her reaction was to rally her circle of Prayer Warriors:
“Hi Prayer Warriors: We are in ‘damage control' mode again today because of this unfair treatment. And we need your prayers to turn this around.”

In another instance, my wife, who has always walked a firm, straight line with God, had the following exchange with Sarah:

George W. Bush once famously said, “I listen to a higher Father” when discussing whether he took advice from his own dad, former
president George H. W. Bush. Similarly, when Sarah wrestled with the possibility of forming a joint ticket with one of the candidates for lieutenant governor—being unhappy at the time with candidate Jerry Ward and eventual winner Sean Parnell—she wrote me,
“I am still praying for a running mate. I don't care if I've been told I shouldn't try and hook up with someone.”
She didn't need advice from pundits or advisors. Like President Bush, she had access to a higher authority.

Though rarely seen praying in public, Sarah would send prayerful notices to her mailing list, as she did in October 2006, when the final push for the governorship was overwhelming us:

Many of us inside the campaign shared a commitment to Christ; those who did not knew enough to either be silent or feign one. Three things definitely helped in getting close to Sarah, and everybody knew what they were: have her believe that you were a devoutly conservative Christian, share a history with her (especially back to her Wasilla days), and exhibit loyalty to her above all others. We couldn't do much about past association, but whether real or faked, faith and loyalty were traits best worn on our sleeves.

As far as the campaign for governor went, Sarah announced proudly that her Christian principles would be a guiding light. After all, Sarah established her popularity by exposing the corrupt practices and behaviors of entrenched politicos such as GOP head Randy Ruedrich and Governor Frank “Murky” Murkowski. The message became: we're better than our rivals because we have a moral foundation that is not built on shifting sands. Nothing, certainly not the desire to win an election, would cause her to abandon that cherished principle:
If we die, we die
.

Sarah, in June 2006, wrote to us that yet another set of lies out of the mouth of radio nemesis Dan Fagan would just
“invigorate us to keep working hard and keep telling the truth.”
In that same email, she continued,
“We'll be held to a different, higher standard through this guys.”

In gung-ho, bring-it-on fashion, we welcomed being held to God's higher standard. We not only had nothing to hide, we never would.

9
 

Nobody Noticed

F
or major parts of our campaign, we did a darn good job of honoring our pledge to run an honest campaign. In plastering the 6,800 signs across the state, pinning buttons, and smacking stickers to bumpers, we upheld our theocratically based principles. But even in Alaska's relatively unsophisticated political landscape, there was more to be done.