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Bostonia: Do readers automatically think Will the Real your book is pro-Palin because you worked at Fox? Please Stand Up? Walshe: They don’t, actually, because Scott works for CBS. But it’s not just A biographer says it’s too soon to that. People were worried that any write off the maverick from book about her would be negative. Now that the book has come out, sources By Cynthia K. Buccini who are close loyalists and people who don’t like her, who were skewered by Ask anyone who’s paid even scant attention to politics in the last her in her book, were also really happy two years, and you’ll find starkly conflicting opinions when it comes to with our book. Conservative media, Sarah Palin. liberal media have embraced it as a fair “She’s either portrayed as an idiot by people who hate her or this book, a fair analysis of this person. godlike figure by the people who love her,” says Shushannah Walshe (COM’01), a journalist who has published a of the former What was your reaction when John Alaska governor and 2008 Republican vice . McCain chose Palin as his running mate? Walshe says she and coauthor Scott Conroy tried to flesh out the details I was stunned. I knew very little about that define the real Sarah Palin in their book, Sarah from Alaska: The her. There were these lists out there, Sudden Rise and Brutal Education of a New Conservative Superstar but she was always a long shot. (PublicAffairs, 2009). I also thought, this is an incredible The authors had spent two months covering Palin’s bid, Walshe as a story. Nobody knows anything about reporter and producer at Channel and Conroy as a campaign this woman, and it’s my job as a jour- reporter for CBS News. nalist to tell people as much informa- Walshe, who left Fox in January 2009 after more than seven years, tion as I can get about her. spoke with Bostonia about the book, which chronicles Palin’s rise to the governorship of Alaska, her campaign as John McCain’s running mate, What was Palin like as governor of Alaska? and the events leading to her resignation as governor. When she was governor she was a reformer. She took on the oil and gas companies, which had never been done Shushannah Walshe (COM’01), coauthor of a before in Alaskan history. She worked book about Sarah Palin, says with Democrats — they were her allies. the former vice presidential VERNON DOUCETTE She wasn’t this dyed-in-the-wool Re- nominee has a gift for connecting with voters, but publican. She had an agenda, and she is also thin-skinned and got it done. vindictive. Another thing we found in our research was that she was really a media darling. The governor before her, Frank Murkowsky, had an antag- onistic relationship with the media. She was a breath of fresh air. The me- dia had her cell phone number, and she was really accessible. Now you see how antagonistic she is with all media, except for the conservative media, frankly. It’s an incredible change.

Why did the media become the enemy during the campaign? I’m sure you remember, in the primary, John McCain had the Straight Talk Express, this freewheeling conversa-

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tion with the media. cussed more.” And that really upset Fiction He’d sit for hours. the McCain campaign. But during the gen- Americans in Space eral election, toward What impact did ’s Mary E. Mitchell (SED’83) the time Palin was have? Thomas Dunne Books picked, the media was I think it was really a brutal satire. “Somewhere in the cocoon starting to get more That famous line — “I can see Russia of sadness of the last two years, shut out. from my house.” How many Americans I misplaced all of my niceness,” She came in, and thought that Sarah Palin had said that says Kate Cavanaugh, the grieving there was absolutely when it was Tina Fey? It became part of widow and mother of two at the no media access for the American consciousness, and you center of Mitchell’s third novel. the first half of her candidacy, and she can’t just laugh that off. That may explain her decreasing didn’t like that. She had a very good tolerance for her rebellious relationship with the Alaska press, How had things changed when she re- teenage daughter, her overly and she felt if she was allowed to talk turned to govern Alaska? maternal (but childless) next-door to the press, she’d be able to add this Her poll numbers, which had been neighbor, her four-year-old son, personal touch. The McCain campaign extraordinarily high before the cam- who won’t stop hoarding ketchup felt very differently. They thought that paign, were declining. The Democrats, bottles, and just about every other she wasn’t ready to freelance, in their who were her allies beforehand, saw person who floats in and out of words, and they thought she should this hyperpartisan talk on the cam- her half-lived life. Still study for these big network interviews. paign trail, and that relationship was trapped in her emotional not there anymore. You have to re- bubble two years after When did she start to go rogue? member, the Republicans never liked her husband’s death, Kate I think the beginning was when she felt her to begin with. They didn’t like struggles to reconnect she wanted to speak to the media and that she had bucked the party. They with those closest to her they wouldn’t let her. That was when thought she was fiscally liberal because without projecting her she first said, “Maybe I should follow she hiked those taxes on the oil com- sorrow onto them. my instincts more than these campaign panies. Then you saw all those ethics Kate may not be particularly operatives.” complaints mount. She had a hard time pleasant, but Mitchell gives her But then you see it just get worse coming home, but she was also fed up protagonist just the right amount when it comes to . Polling with the everyday grind of governing. of caustic wit and human weak- data show there’s no way they can win ness to draw the reader into her Michigan. We have e-mails in our book Do you think Palin will be a presidential chaotic world. The book is full that say, “We need to concentrate on candidate, rather than a kingmaker, of tragedies both small (Kate’s and Ohio.” She says, “It’s in 2012? awkward first dates with a soccer a quick trip [to Michigan]on the bus; We do believe that. We believe that she dad) and large (the suicide of one I’ll even pay for gas.” And this is really wants to be president, but I have to tell of the students she counsels at the annoying to people who are running you honestly, her book does change our local high school). But Mitchell’s the campaign. But she felt that she opinion about whether that’s possible. deft handling of the final stages of would be able to convince Michiganers She had a real opportunity here to grief — that light at the end of the to vote for her. She wanted to go there write a hopeful book, looking forward, tunnel that sometimes seems like in the middle of the night and surprise describing an America that she wants, an oncoming train — rarely wavers them. that she thinks would be best. And she in this account of a woman trying Reverend Wright is something spends almost the entire book trying to put her family, and her own life, that was absolutely banned on the to get back at people and settle scores. back together. Katie Koch campaign. John McCain said he did I do think it changed whether she can not want to bring it up, and she felt be viable. Candor very passionately that that was a mis- Pam Bachorz (COM’95, CAS’95, take. So, she had an interview with But we can expect some kind of second act GSM’03) New York Times columnist William from Palin? Egmont USA Kristol, who asks her about it. And I don’t think she’s going anywhere. And Candor, Florida, the setting in stead of swatting it away, she says, I think that anybody who writes her off of Bachorz’s debut young-adult “I don’t know why that’s not dis- right now, they do it at their own peril. novel, is a modern-day Stepford,

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