Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin (3 page)

In her mind, Sarah had suffered enough and was entitled to riches, just like biblical Jabez (a frequently used Palin password), whose prayers for wealth were similarly answered by God. All those promises to deliver a better Alaska to our children and use her job “to usher change” were uttered before she understood how un-fun and unglamorous being governor would become—a realization more apparent after biting the apple of national acclaim as
the
future of the Republican Party.

On April 21, 2009, five months after she and McCain were defeated by the Obama-Biden ticket, in an email she wrote of the embarrassing fallout from her actions along the campaign trail:

While Sarah Palin's charisma energized followers, her fragile emotional makeup was unnerving. To stay in her good graces, counterattacking anyone who opposed her became top priority. We went after opponents in coordinated attacks, utilizing what we called “Fox News surrogates”: friendly blogs, ghostwritten op-eds, media opinion polls (that we often rigged), letters to editors, and carefully edited speeches. Nobody needed to be told what to do; we understood Sarah's silent mandate to do something
now
. I personally participated in character assassinations, effectively casting undue ethical shadows on her opponents—something I deeply regret.

Minor slights, many of which would have withered under their inconsequentiality, became magnified obsessions that made governing the state of Alaska a lesser priority. An opponent uttering a statement Sarah regarded as an attack demanded retribution and, if possible, the destruction of that person's reputation.

Love thy neighbor? Turn the other cheek? Forgiveness? These New Testament concepts were not part of Sarah's Old Testament temperament.
Both
eyes for an eye was the rule, and vanquishing enemies became a goal. Nothing was more important, to any of us working alongside Sarah, than preserving her image or achieving retribution. Not our families, not our friends, not our financial well-being, not the state's business. Nothing.

I have no doubt Sarah's belief in God is real and passionate. Hers
just isn't the same God that I knew growing up, the One who preached the importance of love, honor, and charity. That I turned my back on these teachings and offered her blind allegiance is a cross I will bear forever. As for Sarah, her values—in and of themselves—have little to do with my writing this book. From my insider's perch from November 2005 well into 2009, I write because I am convinced that her priorities and personality are not only ill suited to head a political party or occupy national office, but would lead to a disaster of, well, biblical proportions.

How we arrived at this day, where the once most popular governor in America would suddenly leave her fellow Alaskans high and dry, is an incredible story. In our tumultuous journey together, there is much to be learned about human nature, politics, and the dangers of investing blind allegiance in any one person.

Having reviewed with my coauthors over fifty thousand emails (my nongovernment Yahoo! account emails, either to or from me) during the campaign and administration, my intention is to let recollections and Sarah's own words tell the tale. You'll find that the emails quoted in this book provide important insights—not only into the workings of Sarah's inner circle and how her campaigns were run; but more important, they give us a picture of the mind and motives of Sarah Palin. All emails are reproduced as written—without correcting grammar, spelling, etc. Great care has been taken to quote these emails accurately and fairly, so let me tell you how we've identified them in text. Longer emails are set off from the regular text in a bold font; emails that are reproduced within a paragraph are identified with quotation marks and italic type. And one more detail: many of the email quotes are not the entire email, but just portions of it. When you see ellipses marks within an email, part of the email has been left out at that place. And following publishing style form, if the quoted portion of the email begins somewhere other than the beginning or ends somewhere other than the end, no ellipses are used at the beginning or end.

I remain a staunch Fox News conservative, so let me say—to borrow a phrase—my observations throughout these pages are heavily documented in an effort to remain “fair and balanced.”

PART ONE

Only in Alaska

1
 

Alaska: Right Time
and Right Place

W
ithin weeks of Sarah declaring her candidacy for governor of Alaska in November 2005, I joined her crusade for change. Once in office, I continued as a troubleshooting jack-of-all-trades while holding the title director of boards and commissions. Working up to eighty hours a week, I maintained that position during her selection as Senator John McCain's vice presidential running mate and continued after their defeat.

Over our three years and nine months together, my perceptions of Sarah evolved radically, but whatever I thought, Sarah Louise Palin was becoming an amazing political and social phenomenon. Without experience, pedigree, or worldliness, individuals like her don't often achieve statewide, much less worldwide, acclaim. Her story is a patchwork quilt of equal cuts beauty queen, lottery winner, political populist, Paris Hilton celebrity, and barnstorming evangelist. There is myth and reality to nearly every one of her story lines, whether it is God's chosen one, devoted wife, mother, and political maverick—or unhinged diva, thin-skinned attack dog, and self-absorbed zealot. Sarah slipped into and out of these roles and personalities, unpredictably mixing and matching one to another. The complexity of the
Palin psyche kept those around her alert, if not eternally anxious. That Sarah achieved eventual political rock stardom amid such interpersonal turmoil is an only-in-Alaska story.

Despite being a geographically massive state, Alaska's population is less than that of Austin, Texas. Of our roughly 700,000 residents, about 40 percent live in and around the city of Anchorage. Juneau, the state capital, has no direct roads leading in and is accessible only by boat or plane. While Alaska could literally reach from the Atlantic Coast to the Pacific Coast in the lower forty-eight, locals refer to the state as the “biggest small town” in America. Outside of Anchorage (population 280,000), Fairbanks (metropolitan area population of about 90,000), and Juneau (31,000), we Alaskans hail from towns too small to be dots on most maps.

When I was two, my father moved our family from central California to Kodiak Island where he taught instrumental music and third grade. While the second largest island in the United States, Kodiak's population was less than 10,000 back in 1972, with our hometown of Kodiak City home to about 1,100 of these residents. The island boasts rainforests and heavy timber harvesting in the northeast, black shale cliffs in the south overlooking both the Gulf of Alaska and the Shelikof Straits, and sandy, rural, windswept vistas in the southwest, down near Alitak Bay and Olga Bay.

Like much of Alaska, Kodiak was a throwback to an earlier time, with bars outnumbering churches and schools several times over. Our first stoplight—a blinking affair at a three-way intersection—was installed around 1980. For my parents, the adjustment from sunny California couldn't have been easy. In the worst of the December nights, I gathered branches or snapped apart pallets for firewood, but there was still little heat. In fact, it was not uncommon to find ice in the toilets come morning. We were poor even by local standards. If it wasn't for the charity of our church, the Kodiak Bible Chapel, and the abundance of salmon, halibut, and crab, we'd have likely starved. As it was, our family of six (two brothers and a sister) often went to bed hungry. Paper routes, frying burgers at a Dairy Queen, and eventually working
aboard sometimes dangerous commercial fishing boats became my way of contributing to the family income at an early age. These long hours instilled in me a willingness to work slavishly and an appreciation for people who struggle to keep their heads above water financially.

And while a person never becomes accustomed to hardship, we on Kodiak Island accept our relative isolation, fickle weather, and the ever-present potential for natural disaster as the price we paid for a lifestyle of freedom and self-determination. For instance, we have a volcano just across Shelikof Strait, Mount Katmai, whose sixty-hour eruption in 1912 represented the largest of the twentieth century. The resulting blanket of soot washed down and covered Kodiak homes with ash that is still evident today when one digs down only a few inches. It was nearly seven years before the acid-choked waters of Kodiak could support a salmon industry again, but most of the island's early-century population of five hundred elected to remain and rebuild their lives.

On March 27, 1964, a second massive devastation struck the island. Centered less than one hundred miles away, the largest earthquake ever recorded in North America—magnitude 9.2 on the Richter scale—struck on Good Friday. Chimneys fell, windows shattered, and roofs caved. Devastating waves from an ensuing tsunami splintered homes and moorings. Like before, the citizens picked up, rebuilt, and started over. This far north, we know that it won't be
if
we face a next challenge, but
when
.

With these extremes, neighbor depends on neighbor when life hangs in the balance. Once we give our loyalty and word of honor, we do so with conviction and faith.

In Alaskan politics, it is no less true.