The best way to analyze Sarah Palin’s political career is as a series of picked fights. Josh Marshall touched on this aspect of her personality briefly in a post last night, but I think it deserves a more in-depth examination. Palin seems to be fueled by a desire to create enemies and maintain feuds with them for as long as possible. In every phase of her political career, she has defined herself by who she fights as much as by what she stands for.
The clearest, and perhaps most damaging instance of this pattern is Troopergate. There’s really not much to say about this one. It has the Palin signature not-able-to-let-it-go quality, and she was so unable to control herself she allowed a family feud to endanger her promising political career.
Her 2008 Vice Presidential run was defined by her attacks on Obama. Palin’s career-launching 2008 RNC speech was striking to me in that she was willing to go so personal so fast. Beyond the golly gee hockey mom lines, the money lines were all personal attacks, from “two memoirs and no accomplishments” to “like a community organizer, but with actual responsibilities”. When that didn’t work, she changed gears and became the driving force for the “I’m calling him a terrorist but not really” meme.
Throughout her political career she has been in a constant feud with any member of the media was within moose-rifle range. Here again she’s unable to leave issues settled, even when her family is involved. As of January 2009 she was still trying to fight the Trig’s maternity battle, even though her insistence on not letting the matter drop was the only reason anybody was still talking about it. Finally, she decided that it was a good idea to drag her family into a battle with David Letterman. In round one of the fight, Palin was the sympathetic figure, but her bizarre insistence on demanding additional apologies and continued use of her family to score political points destroyed whatever goodwill she had accumulated. No matter who you are, there is something wrong with dragging out a battle in which your 14 year-old daughter is the center of attention, and it is even more disturbing that she insisted on involving the term rape in the fight. I don’t know who is telling her that perpetual victimhood is the path to political power, but her constant feuding has been distracting for her and annoying for the rest of us.