Unless you’ve been living under a rock the past week or so, you can’t have failed to notice the launch of Sarah Palin’s new book, “Going Rogue“.  I have read her much anticipated tome and recommend saving your money and borrowing someone else’s copy.  Books by politicians tend to fall into one of two categories—a statement of their political views and/or policies or a memoir of their life and a defense of their actions. “Going Rogue” is a mix of the two, performs badly on both counts, and is ultimately unsatisfying as a result.

That’s a shame because “Going Rogue” had the potential to be a very compelling book. Sarah Palin’s meteoric rise to fame, first as governor of Alaska and then as the first female Republican vice-presidential candidate, captured everyone’s interest and her behind-the-scenes account of the 2008 campaign could have been a rip-roaring good tale. Would a different ghost writer, someone less polemic than Lynn Vincent, been able to coax the story out of her? It’s hard to say.

Likewise, a straight forward account of her conservative principles and her take on politics of the day would have had a smaller, but equally interested audience. Unfortunately, “Going Rogue” mixes a generalized account of her life and career with political screeds and the end result ranges from clashing to completely unbelievable. Are we really supposed to buy, for example, that she urged her daughter Bristol to put off starting a small business until Obama was out of office? Sheesh.

The publication of “Going Rogue” has set off an avalanche of refutations and fact checking.  A list of links follows:

Poltifact factchecks Palin’s book  here

Shushannah Walshe, one of the authors of “Sarah from Alaska”, refutes some of Palin’s claims about the 2008 campaign here

Shannyn Moore offers three of the Alaskans (Anne Kilkenny, John Bitney, and Andrew Halcro) who were bad-mouthed in the book equal time on her show, video segments of which are posted on here on her blog, “Just a Girl from Homer”, and on YouTube. The panel discussion is very civilized. I must say that I’m happy to finally see a group of people who actually understand Alaskan issues and know Mrs. Palin personally talk about this book as opposed to the usual range of vacuous talking heads.

Geoffrey Dunn (Huffington Post columnist) talks here about Anchorage activist Andree McLeod and here about Palin’s former brother-in-law, Mike Wooten, also bad-mouthed in the book. Dunn is a regular blogger on the lefty mega-site, the Huffington Post. He also has a book coming out called “The Lies of Sarah Palin” so he obviously has a bias, but the posts are interesting for the counterpoint they provide.

My ratings of other books on or about Sarah Palin:

Avoid “Sarah: How a Hockey Mom Turned Alaska’s Political Establishment Upside Down” by Kaylene Johnson. It’s a puff piece.

“Sarah from Alaska: The Sudden Rise and Brutal Education of a New Conservative Superstar” by Scott Conroy and Shushannah Walshe, two reporters embedded with the McCain campaign, is an excellent book and an engaging read. The authors are sympathetic to their subject, but not blind to her faults and give an even-handed account of her career and the subsequent fall-out from the 2008 campaign.

To get the bigger picture, I highly recommend “The Battle for America 2008: The Story of an Extraordinary Election” by Haynes Johnson and Dan Balz. Johnson and Balz had behind the scenes access to all of the players in the 2008 election and give a clear rendering of the major problems with the Clinton and McCain campaigns as well the ups and downs of the Obama campaign. Another very readable and engaging book.

Nothing in his presidency became him like the leaving of it …..

The transition was the part of the job he handled the best. A sad coda.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

Two years ago, everyone knew how the election of 2008 was going to turn out. Senators John McCain and Hilary Clinton would readily crush their hopeful, but unelectable opponents in their respective primaries. Crowned with inevitable laurels, these two would go on to face each other in the general election and the populace would yawn their way through another presidential race between two largely identical candidates.

As for the rookie Senator from Illinois who had obviously been reading too many of his own press releases? Well, he would wage a promising, but doomed primary campaign which would then explode in his face due to his own inexperience. He would limp back to the U.S. Senate to lick his wounds, sadder but wiser, and with more respect for his elders and betters.

But that wasn’t what happened.

I didn’t get myself worked up about the primaries. Frankly, when I surveyed the prospects both the Republicans and Democrats were putting forward, my first thought was that we needed to wipe the slate clean and start over from scratch.  But the junior senator from Illinois surprised me. He managed his campaign well. He out-organized his more experienced rivals. He said things, thoughtful things, that made sense. Most of all, he was Change with a capital “C” and he made me believe that real change, change for the better, could actually happen.

And I needed that.

After 9/11, I lost my faith. Not my faith in God, but my faith in our system of government,  the faith that we all grow up with, the faith that says that while our government might not be perfect, if we work hard and educate ourselves about the issues and vote our consciences and every other platitude about civic engagement, we can change policies and politics for the better. That our voice counts. That we, the Lower Downs, the non-Ruling Classes, that we matter.

The fall of the Twin Towers took the scales from my eyes. I realized then that all of those hackneyed sayings about democracy I grew up with were only empty words. That it was the Higher Ups, the rich, upper class white guys who really ran things and rest of us just thought we did. That the Higher Ups did what they liked and the rest of us had to pay the price for their ineptitude and corruption. That it had always been this way and would always be this way and nothing we Lower Downs could do would ever change the course of the Ship of State, even if was taking on water and heading for the rocks.

And I was angry. Deeply, quietly angry at everything. The System was rotten to the core, I was furious about it, and I didn’t know how to channel that anger constructively.  Suddenly, the survivalists and anarchists and every other fringe group that I had ever laughed at seemed to have a point.  If the Gubmint is really out to get you, then it make sense to have ready access to semi-automatic weapons. If the laws of the land don’t apply to the Higher Ups, then why should they apply to us Lower Downs? If courts can be sidestepped and justice subverted, then why not take the law into our own hands?

On the surface, I was calm. But beneath that surface, dark thoughts swirled. I wasn’t about to jump into the abyss–at least not yet–but I was looking into it, as Nietsche says, and it was looking back.

What specifically did I want to change? Everything. But peaceful change seemed out of reach and getting more so every day.

Then Barack Obama came along and change, a sea change, suddenly seemed possible again. In his acceptance speech at the Democratic national convention, Sen. Obama said the smartest thing I have ever heard a presidential candidate say. This presidential race “isn’t about me,” he said. “It’s about you.” About how we wanted to live. About what we wanted our country to be like, not just for the next four years, but for decades to come. And it was within our grasp. We weren’t sharing his dream; he was sharing ours.

The cynical angels of our nature tell us that no presidency can possibly live up to the great expectations, articulated or not, that the Obama-Biden adminstration has had heaped upon it. And it’s true that no one man can possibly juggle all those competing demands without disappointing someone. But this presidency isn’t about what Barack Obama can do as much as it is about what we can do together. And I believe–yes, I believe again–that we can do anything we put our minds to.

Democracy is a fragile thing. It’s not based on laws or tradition, but on the faith and trust by and of the citizens in their republic and those they choose to represent them. Thank you, President Obama, for giving me back my faith.

Not to be out done, John McCain summons his own group of zombie supporters.

Okay, who put Election Day so close to Halloween? Somebody had a sense of humor, that’s all I can say. For more funny stuff, check out the video “Partisan Pumpkins Try to Squash Each Other”. Tres amusing!

Halloween is my very favorite holiday of all time so I thought I’d present you, gentle reader, with some fun Halloween links.

Braaaainsss we need.

Democraticstuff.com has all sorts of amusing special interest buttons including ones for the living dead. In the interest of fairness, I did check out Republicanstuff.com, but unfortunately they just have very vanilla McCain/Palin buttons.

Tom Nardone, the twisted genius behind Extreme Pumpkins, is back with a sequel, Extreme Pumpkins II.  I’ve mentioned his site before, but it’s well worth a visit. The 2008 Pumpkin Carving Contest winners are very …well…”cool” is one word for them. “Demented” would be another.

The only thing worse than cannibal pumpkins is exploding pumpkins. Apparently, heavy rains in the New England area are causing some giant pumpkins to crack up.

In the spirit of the election year, I, Miss Method, will now provide you with some political information. Brace yourself for the following:

John McCain is a Cylon! This website proves it!! Warning: don’t be drinking anything while reading or you will spit-take all over the screen.

Most of the Net buzz about McCain’s vice-president, Sarah Palin, is either overly laudatory, insulting or offensive. I thought this magazine cover, however, was very funny.

If you want some real help in making your decision this November, then check out Politifact, a joint effort of the St. Petersburg Times and Congressional Quarterly. They check and verify the candidates’ statements and rate them according to degrees of truthfulness. What I especially like is that they tell you how they arrived at their conclusion.