Repent at leisure

Sarah Palin must have seemed like the perfect match. A little young perhaps, and not really from anywhere convenient — Wasilla, Alaska, not being on most people’s mental maps — but definitely “our kind of people”. So John McCain must have thought when he impulsively picked her out of a crowd of hopeful Republicans as his vice-presidential nominee. She might not know a lot about foreign, or any, policy, but she would hopefully “energise the base” — stir interest among the party faithful that were noticeably unenthusiastic about McCain. What McCain didn’t seem to anticipate was just how much she’d enjoy it.

So much is she revelling in it that last week she wound up criticising McCain for not going after Obama enough. And she seems to have decided to ignore the frantic efforts to get her back “on-message”. So much so that word is now creeping out that the campaign is wracked with dissension; and that Palin herself has decided to “go rogue”. A terrifying prospect from someone who we are told thinks nothing of skinning a moose before breakfast while wearing rimless glasses.

After all, what has Sarah Palin to lose? The Republican ticket is increasingly unlikely to win, but she has been catapulted to national fame. (Also, clearly, international fame, but Palins tend to view that as a negative.) Perhaps she can convert that into a campaign four years from now, but only if she isn’t held responsible for crashing-and-burning this one — which, with her writhingly embarrassing performance in interviews and polarising speeches, she may just have. Hence the attempts now to distance herself from McCain. If McCain loses, she will have already undergone the separation; she can re-introduce herself, swishing into the party as a gay divorcee, the cynosure of all eyes, given the divorce settlement gives her the Republican base. And, of course, she gets to keep the $150,000 trousseau.