2011. 6 萨拉-佩林的悲剧

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POLITICS
The Tragedy of Sarah Palin
From the moment Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech electrified the Republican convention, she was seen as an unbending, hard-charging, red-meat ideologue—to which soon was added “thin-skinned” and “vindictive.” But a look at what Palin did while in office in Alaska—the only record she has—shows a very different politician: one who worked with Democrats to tame Big Oil and solve the great problem at the heart of the state’s politics. That Sarah Palin might have set the nation on a different course. What went wrong?

By Joshua Green

JUNE 2011 ISSUE
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IT’S HARD TO escape Sarah Palin. On Facebook and Twitter, cable news and reality television, she is a constant object of dispute, the target or instigator of some distressingly large proportion of the political discourse. If she runs for president—well, brace yourself! But there is one place where a kind of collective resolve has been able to push her aside, make her a less suffocating presence than almost everywhere else: Alaska.

During a week spent traveling there recently, I learned that Palin occupies a place in the minds of most Alaskans roughly like that of an ex-spouse from a stormy marriage: she’s a distant bad memory, and questions about her seem vaguely unwelcome. Visitors to Juneau, the capital and a haven for cruise-ship tourism, are hard-pressed to find signs of the state’s most famous citizen—no “Mama Grizzly” memorabilia or T-shirts bearing her spunky slogans. Although the town was buzzing with politics because the legislature was in session, talk of Palin mainly revolved around a rumored Democratic poll showing her to be less popular in Alaska right now than Barack Obama. The only tangible evidence I saw was her official portrait in the capitol and a small sign in the window of a seedy-looking gift shop advertising “Sarah Palin toilet paper.” Alaska has moved on.


So has Palin. Two years after abruptly resigning the governorship, she is a national figure, touring the country to promote her books; speaking out whenever moved to on important issues of the day; and serving, mainly through Fox News, as the guardian-enforcer of a particularly martial brand of conservatism. Though she still lives in Alaska, she has all but withdrawn from its public life, appearing only seldom and then usually to film her reality-television show, Sarah Palin’s Alaska.

But if she decides to run for the White House—and she’ll have to make up her mind soon—all of that will change. As much as Alaska might like to forget Sarah Palin, and she it, her record there, especially as governor, will take on new salience.

Palin entered the national consciousness more suddenly than most high-level politicians do, and she did it in the intense final stretch of a presidential campaign, which had a kiln-like effect of hardening the initial impression—depending on your point of view, of the provincial half-wit portrayed by Tina Fey or the plain-sense Mama Grizzly proudly leading her army of culture warriors. In modern politics, your “brand,” once established, is almost impossible to change. Only a handful of politicians have changed theirs (Hillary Clinton is one), and then only through tireless perseverance. Palin has shown little inclination to revise or deepen these impressions—she didn’t respond to my requests to discuss her record—and she hasn’t designated anyone else to do it for her. (Mama Grizzlies claw; they don’t contextualize.)

But over the past few months, Palin has begun fortifying her profile by visiting foreign countries and delivering speeches that extol her record as governor, especially on energy, as she did in March to an audience of international business leaders in India. Energy was supposed to be her big issue in the 2008 presidential campaign, but it was overshadowed by her missteps. She seems to be reintroducing herself.

And there’s plenty she could reintroduce—much more than the public, which long ago made up its mind about Palin, has any idea she actually achieved. For all the attention she gets, her claim to a role in public life is rarely the focus; more often, it’s dismissed outright. In any discussion of her candidacy, her critics’ first argument for why she couldn’t win, always slapped down like a winning poker hand, is that she quit her governorship. That’s indeed discreditable and harms her chances, but it glides right past the question of what she did before she quit, and how that has turned out for Alaska. And that’s a more interesting story than you might suppose—a story quite at odds with her popular perception today in Alaska and everywhere else.

As governor, Palin demonstrated many of the qualities we expect in our best leaders. She set aside private concerns for the greater good, forgoing a focus on social issues to confront the great problem plaguing Alaska, its corrupt oil-and-gas politics. She did this in a way that seems wildly out of character today—by cooperating with Democrats and moderate Republicans to raise taxes on Big Business. And she succeeded to a remarkable extent in settling, at least for a time, what had seemed insoluble problems, in the process putting Alaska on a trajectory to financial well-being. Since 2008, Sarah Palin has influenced her party, and the tenor of its politics, perhaps more than any other Republican, but in a way that is almost the antithesis of what she did in Alaska. Had she stayed true to her record, she might have pointed her party in a very different direction.

INSIDE THE ALASKA CAPITOL hangs a framed copy of the front page of the Anchorage Daily News for September 11, 1969, its headline—“Alaska’s Richest Day: $900 Million!”—stretching above a picture of purposeful-looking men in suits carrying large briefcases and about to duck into a car. The briefcases contain a fortune that is being rushed to the airport and on to a bank in San Francisco, so Alaskans will not forgo a single day’s interest. This is the proceeds of the state’s first oil-lease auction since the discovery, a year earlier, of the massive oil deposit at Prudhoe Bay on Alaska’s North Slope, to this day the largest in North America. The headline captures the euphoria over the massive payout by the world’s leading oil companies—a windfall that transformed the state’s politics, economy, and self-image almost overnight.

Throughout most of its history as a territory and, after 1959, as a state, Alaska was a tenuous proposition, a barren outpost rich in resources yet congenitally poor because the outside interests that extracted them didn’t leave much behind. The main obstacle to statehood was convincing Congress that Alaska wouldn’t immediately go bust. It still relies heavily on aid from Washington, and that, combined with the federal government’s holding title to 60 percent of its land base (the state itself holds 28 percent more), generates a robust resentment of federal power. The colonial mind-set is reinforced by the intensity of the state’s politics, a common attribute of remote settlements like Alaska, as the historian Ken Coates has noted—think Lord of the Flies.

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To suddenly strike it rich opens up all sorts of possibilities, but there can be problems too. The legislature exhausted its fortune without meeting Alaskans’ outsize expectations. And although oil brought jobs and revenue, it also ensured that a state long accustomed to economic subservience would be beholden to a powerful new interest. Oil is more important to Alaska than the movie business is to Los Angeles or the auto industry is to Michigan. Stephen Haycox, a professor at the University of Alaska at Anchorage, writes in Frigid Embrace, his history of the state’s political economy, “The oil industry is, for all practical purposes, Alaska’s only private economy.”

This binds the state’s fortunes not just to the price of oil but also to the fate of the three giants that dominate Alaska: BP, ExxonMobil, and ConocoPhillips. Oil taxes supply almost 90 percent of the general revenue, so oil is the central arena of state politics. The industry is forever trying to coax lower taxes, lighter regulation, and greater public investment by promising jobs and riches—or, on occasion, threatening to withdraw them.

In 1978, the Democratic legislature tried to secure the state’s share of oil profits by establishing a corporate income tax over the bitter opposition of the oil companies, which sued to overturn it. They lost in every venue, including, finally, the U.S. Supreme Court. But the real battle was fought in the statehouse.

The oil industry contributed mainly to Republicans through the 1960s and ’70s, but came to realize that it needed broader alliances, and in the late ’70s began courting Democrats too. The strategy paid off. In 1981, the oil companies, through their allies in the legislature, launched a coup, ousting the speaker of the house and key committee chairmen. Then they revoked the corporate income tax. For the next 25 years, oil interests ruled the state almost uninterruptedly.

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PALIN’S RISE BEGAN in 2002, when, term-limited as mayor of Wasilla, she ran for lieutenant governor. Little known and heavily outspent, she beat expectations, losing only narrowly and showing an exceptional ability to win fervent support. Afterward, she campaigned for Frank Murkowski, the four-term Alaska senator come home to run for governor. Palin traveled the state speaking about Murkowski, and making herself better known. When he won, she was short-listed to serve the remainder of his Senate term, and even interviewed for the job. But it went to his daughter Lisa instead. (Palin acidly recounts the patronizing interview with the new governor in her memoir, Going Rogue.) Palin got the low-profile chairmanship of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, a regulatory body charged with ensuring that these resources are developed in the public interest.

By the time she arrived, the notion that Alaska’s oil-and-gas policy operated in the public interest was getting hard to maintain. The industry controlled the state, and especially the Republican Party. Other than a modest adjustment to oil taxes that squeezed through in 1989 after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the hammerlock held. Alaskans were coming to regard this situation with suspicion and anxiety. The problem wasn’t just that the state was starved of revenue from its most valuable resource. It was also the failure to develop another resource to which the oil companies held title: Alaska’s bountiful supply of natural gas. It’s always been understood that North Slope oil would one day run dry. Someday, perhaps as soon as 2019, there won’t be enough oil left to push through the trans-Alaska pipeline—a catastrophe, unless the state somehow replaces the revenue. For this reason, building a gas pipeline has long been a political priority, and one the oil companies have balked at.

From her spot on the oil-and-gas commission, Palin touched off a storm over these anxieties. One glaring example of the unhealthy commingling of oil interests and Republican politics was her fellow commissioner and Murkowski appointee, Randy Ruedrich, who was also chairman of the state Republican Party. Less than a year into the job, Ruedrich got crosswise with Palin for conducting party business from his office (and, it was later revealed, giving information to a company that the commission oversaw). When he ignored her admonitions to stop, she complained to Murkowski’s staff, but still nothing happened. So Palin laid out her concerns in a letter to the governor and the story leaked to the media. In the ensuing uproar, Palin became a hero and Murkowski was left no choice but to fire Ruedrich from the commission.

Palin got strong support from an unlikely quarter: Democrats. “She had the appearance of someone who was willing to go in a different direction,” Hollis French, a Democratic state senator, told me. “We subsequently learned that she’ll throw anyone under a bus, but that wasn’t apparent at the time. It looked like real moral courage.”

Even so, Palin’s actions were presumed to have ruined her prospects. Murkowski and Ruedrich still ran the party. Breaking with them made her no longer viable as an ordinary Republican or a recipient of oil-company largesse. To continue her rise, she needed to find another path. Palin alone imagined that she could. In this and other ways, she displayed all the traits that would become famous: the intense personalization of politics, the hyper-aggressive score-settling—and the dramatic public gesture, which came next.

Palin was clearly the victor (Ruedrich paid the largest civil fine in state history), but she quit the commission anyway. In Going Rogue, she says only that as a commissioner, she was subject to a gag order that Murkowski refused to lift. But quitting didn’t void the gag order. What it did was thrust her back into the spotlight and reinforce her public image. It also gave her a rationale to challenge Murkowski.

All of this turned out to be shrewd politics, because Murkowski’s governorship proceeded to fall apart, thanks to his brazen sense of entitlement. After failing to persuade the Homeland Security Department to buy him a personal jet (to help “defend, deter or defeat opposition forces”), he ignored the legislature’s objections and bought one with state funds. But it was his handling of matters vital to the state’s future that finally threw open the door for Palin.

Murkowski made up his mind to strike a deal with the major oil producers to finally build a gas pipeline from the North Slope. He cut out the legislature and insisted on negotiating through his own team of experts, out of public sight. This rankled all sorts of people because, beyond his arrogance, Murkowski had distinct views about oil and gas that many others didn’t share.

Alaska’s parties align differently from parties elsewhere—they’re further to the right and principally concerned with resource extraction. The major philosophical divide, especially on oil and gas, is between those who view the state as beholden to the oil companies for its livelihood, and will grant them almost anything to ensure that livelihood, and those who view its position as being like the owner of a public corporation for whom the oil companies’ interests are separate from and subordinate to those of its citizen-shareholders. “Oil and gas cuts a swath right through ordinary partisan politics,” Patrick Galvin, Palin’s revenue commissioner, told me.

Murkowski’s willingness to cater to the oil producers, and his secrecy, caused tensions in his administration that burst into view when he announced his deal, in October 2005. It was a breathtaking giveaway that ceded control of the pipeline to the oil companies and retained only a small stake for Alaskans; established a 30-year regime of low taxes impossible to revoke; indemnified companies against any damages from accidents; and exempted everything from open-records laws. In exchange, the state got an increase in the oil-production tax. (Palin later released a private memo in which Murkowski’s top economic adviser complains that he has “gone completely overboard” and is treating “Alaska as a banana republic in order to secure the gas line.”) The deal conceded so much that Murkowski’s natural-resources commissioner, Tom Irwin, publicly questioned its legality—and was summarily fired. Six of Irwin’s aides quit in protest, and the “Magnificent Seven” became a cause célèbre. In the end, the legislature rejected the gas-line deal. But, in a twist, it agreed to the oil tax—which had been intended as an inducement to pass the rest of the package.

Palin came out hard on the other side of the philosophical divide from Murkowski—and made it personal. She announced she would challenge him for governor. She assailed the “secret gas line deal” and the “multinational oil companies that make mind-boggling profits off resources owned by all Alaskans.” She put an “all-Alaska” pipeline at the center of her campaign. And she declared her intention to hire Tom Irwin to negotiate the deal. “She’s what I call ‘alley-cat smart,’” Tony Knowles, the former Democratic governor, told me. “It’s not about ideology. She knows how to pick her way down the political route that she feels will be the most beneficial to what she wants to do.”

Murkowski’s tax was discredited almost immediately. Just after he signed the new Petroleum Profits Tax, the FBI raided the offices of six legislators, in what became the biggest corruption scandal in state history. During the legislative session, the FBI had hidden a video camera at the Baranof Hotel, in Juneau, in a suite that belonged to Bill Allen, a major power broker and the chief executive of Veco Corporation, an oil-services firm. The tapes showed him discussing bribes with important politicians, and revealed the existence of a group of Republican legislators who called themselves the “Corrupt Bastards Club” and took bribes from Allen and others. (Several were later sent to prison.)

In the Republican primary, Palin crushed Murkowski, delivering one of the worst defeats ever suffered by an incumbent governor anywhere. She went on to have little trouble dispatching Knowles, an oil-friendly Democrat. “A lot of people on the East Coast, when they think of Sarah Palin now,” Cliff Groh, a former state tax lobbyist, told me, “some five-letter words come to mind: Scary. Crazy. Angry. Maybe some others. But the five-letter word that people in Alaska associated with her name was clean.”

PALIN HAS GAINED a reputation for being erratic, undisciplined, not up to the job. But that wasn’t how she looked as governor. She began by confronting the two biggest issues in Alaska—the gas pipeline and the oil tax—and drove the policy process on both of them.

After taking office in December 2006, she kept her word and hired Tom Irwin, and other members of the Magnificent Seven. They devised a plan to attract someone other than the oil companies to build the pipeline, and they bid out the license to move ahead with it—to the deep displeasure of the oil producers, who vowed not to participate. Palin came under serious political pressure. Although she doesn’t mention it in Going Rogue, the Associated Press discovered that Vice President Dick Cheney called her at least twice that month. According to her aides, Cheney urged her to make concessions, but she didn’t.

That spring, the Alaska Gasline Inducement Act sailed to passage, helped along by criminal indictments in the Veco scandal, which were handed down just as the bill came up. Still, Palin was the deciding factor. A new pipeline plan had seemed unlikely when she took over, but she kept the legislature focused on the task.

She kept herself focused, too: though priding herself on her well-advertised social conservatism, she was prepared to set it aside when necessary. Rather than pick big fights about social issues, she declined to take up two abortion-restriction measures that she favored, and vetoed a bill banning benefits for same-sex partners of state workers.

Next came the oil tax. The corruption scandal had tainted Murkowski’s new law. The FBI tapes of Bill Allen revealed that it was central to the bribery. “It became clear,” Hollis French told me, “that filthy, filthy things had happened to influence that tax.” Most Alaskans were disgusted and open to revisiting, and possibly increasing, the tax. But Palin’s preferred mode of operating—charging righteously forth to attack her enemies—would make a new agreement harder, not easier, to reach. An explicit charge that the Petroleum Profits Tax was corrupt would imply, by extension, that the (unindicted) legislators who had passed it were corrupt, too—and she needed their votes.

Again Palin kept her worst impulses in check. And when she was drawn into the fight, she proved nimble and resourceful. Two things finally prompted her to move ahead: when tax season rolled around, the PPT yielded much less revenue than anticipated; and Democrats needled her incessantly about how much of a reformer she truly was. Then as now twitchingly alert to any slight, Palin loathed the implication.

In September, she released her proposal and, so no one missed the point, christened it Alaska’s Clear and Equitable Share (ACES). Stronger than Murkowski’s PPT, it met a mostly hostile reception from her party. “I will stand in your way like the little man in Tiananmen Square to keep you from hurting the economy,” one Republican House member declared. Democrats, eager to capitalize on public anger, introduced several tougher alternatives that were particularly aggressive—that is, confiscatory—when oil prices rose. Palin focused on capturing more revenue when prices were low.

At first, her team tried to win the Republicans over. But it became clear this wasn’t going to happen. So Palin did something that would be hard to imagine from her today: she pivoted to the Democrats. “We sat down with her and said, ‘If you want to get something passed, it’ll have to be much stronger,’” Les Gara, a liberal House member, told me. “And to give her credit, she did what she needed to get a bill passed.”

In the end, Palin essentially grafted the Democrats’ proposal onto her own. What she signed into law went well beyond her original proposal: ACES imposes a higher base tax rate than its predecessor on oil profits. But the really significant part has been that the tax rate rises much sooner and more steeply as oil prices climb—the part Democrats pushed for. The tax is assessed monthly, rather than annually, to better capture price spikes, of which there have been many. ACES also makes it harder for companies to claim tax credits for cleaning up spills caused by their own negligence, as some had done under the old regime.

Four years later, Palin’s gas line hasn’t gotten going, but it’s not really her fault. Plunging natural-gas prices have made the project uneconomical. Her oil tax is a different story: though designed to capture more revenue under most scenarios, ACES has raised a lot more money than almost anyone imagined. That’s largely because of high oil prices. But it also shows that the law is working. ConocoPhillips, BP, and ExxonMobil have reported record profits—so it’s fitting that, in a sense, Alaska has, too. It’s no exaggeration to say that ACES has made the state one of the fiscally strongest in the union. Flush with cash, Alaska produced large capital budgets that blunted the effects of the recession. Moody’s just upped the state’s bond rating to AAA for the first time. While other states reel under staggering deficits, budget cuts, and protests, Alaska has built up a $12 billion surplus, most of it attributable to Palin’s tax. Galvin estimates that it has raised $8 billion more than Murkowski’s tax would have. But given the corruption that plagued the PPT, a better benchmark might be the tax it supplanted—the one put on the books after the Exxon Valdez spill. By that measure, Palin’s major achievement has probably meant the difference between a $12 billion surplus and a deficit.

WHAT HAPPENED TO Sarah Palin? How did someone who so effectively dealt with the two great issues vexing Alaska fall from grace so quickly? Anyone looking back at her record can’t help but wonder: How did a popular, reformist governor beloved by Democrats come to embody right-wing resentment?

A big part of the answer is that the qualities that brought her original successes—the relentlessness, the impulse to settle scores—weren’t nearly so admirable when deployed against less worthy foes than Murkowski and the oil companies. In Alaska, she applied those qualities to fulfilling the promises that got her elected, and in her first year was the most popular governor in the country. “It was very, very powerful stuff,” Anita Dunn, a Democratic strategist for Knowles, and later for Barack Obama, told me. “She was this dowdy, but very attractive, person who drew a lot of support from progressive women. She was serious business.”

But even before she left the state, she let herself be distracted by the many grievances she harbored against a wide range of enemies. When I was in Juneau, a draft memoir by one of her former aides, Frank Bailey, was leaked to a number of political insiders, and from one of them to me. The manuscript’s memorable quality is its rendering of Palin and what it was like to work with her. Bailey was cast aside after years of loyal service and has an ax to grind. But his portrait is persuasive nonetheless, because he peppers his book with internal e-mails that he kept, from Palin and her staff.

Bailey says their “enemy number one” was a local conservative radio host to whom she would listen for hours, fuming. Ugly rumors of the sort common in politics were another fixation, as this e-mail furnished by Bailey attests:

From: Sarah

To: Scott Heyworth Cc: Todd Palin

Sent: Friday, January 06, 2006 10:19 AM

Subject: Todd’s son

Scott:

Todd just told me you had spoken with him awhile back and reported that some law enforcement friends of yours claimed some dumbass lie about Track not being Todd’s son? This really, really disgusts me and ticks me off.

I want to know right now who said it, who would ever lie about such a thing this is the type of bullshit lie about family that WILL keep me from running for Governor. I hate this kind of crap. I thought it was bad enough that my kids have been lied about recently regarding illegal activities that they had NO part in whatsoever. But a stupid claim like one of our kids isn’t fathered by Todd?

I want to know NOW what this latest b.s. is all about because I want to get to the bottom of this garbage rumor mill. People who lie like this may know me well enough to KNOW THAT I WILL ALWAYS PUT FAMILY FIRST, AND IF UGLY LIES LIKE THIS ARE BELIEVED BY ANYONE AND ADVERSELY AFFECT MY HUSBAND AND KIDS I WILL PULL OUT OF THE RACE BECAUSE IT’S NOT WORTH IT—AT ALL—TO LET MY FAMILY BE VICTIMS OF DARK, UGLY POLITICS LIKE THIS.

Sarah
Palin obsessed over her image, even more than most politicians. According to Bailey, she orchestrated a campaign to inundate newspapers with phony letters praising her. This evidently became a favored tactic. Bailey even includes a letter he says she wrote under another name accusing an opponent, John Binkley, of copying her Web-site design. (Excerpt: “This may not seem like such a big deal, but not having an original idea and taking credit for someone else’s work gives us a clue of how Johne [sic] works.”) In the idiom of the Web, Palin was a troll.

Much of this was harmless (if also pointless) and would not have undermined her political career. Politicians from Nixon to Clinton have been similarly consumed and still flourished. But Palin also committed more-serious ethical breaches. The most notorious of these involved her attempts to get her former brother-in-law, a state trooper, fired, and included Palin’s removal of the trooper’s boss when he didn’t comply with her wish. An investigation by the legislature found that, in some of her actions, she had abused her powers.

Palin seems to have been driven by a will to advance herself and by a virulent animus against anyone who tried to impede her. But this didn’t prevent her from being an uncommonly effective governor, while she lasted. On the big issues, at least, she chose her enemies well, and left the state in better shape than most people, herself included, seem to realize or want to credit her for. It’s odd that someone so preoccupied with her image hasn’t gotten this across better. And it raises the question of what she could have achieved.

“The thing that strikes me again and again is that she was so single-minded when she got here,” Gregg Erickson, a former senior state economist and co-founder of the Alaska Budget Report, an influential political newsletter, told me. “The problem with amateurs in politics is that they often lack that focus. She had it. She was terrible at running a staff, and given that, it’s amazing she was successful. But on the issues she made the focus of her administration—the oil tax and the gas line—she had good staff, listened to them, and backed them up. She was a transformative governor, no question. If it hadn’t been for her stunning ability to confuse personal interests and her role as governor, she could have gone on to be tremendously successful.”

JOHN MCCAIN’S ADVISERS say he chose Palin because they believed that the race needed shaking up. But she must have appealed to him for reasons beyond her gender and vivacity. Palin was fresh from major, unexpected victories. She had challenged her own party’s corruption, at grave risk to her career. For this, she was wildly popular. Surely, that brought back McCain’s old battles against George W. Bush and the Republican establishment, and the glory they had won him.

But McCain and Palin didn’t run as mavericks. Instead, they turned hard right. Palin’s old colleagues were stunned. “The speech at the Republican convention that made her a star, that was just shocking,” French told me. “She could have said, ‘I’ll do for the nation what I did for Alaska: I’ll work with both sides and won’t care where the ideas come from.’ Her background supported that. Instead, they handed her a red-meat script she’s been reading from ever since.”

After the election, Palin returned to being governor, but she didn’t last long. She says unwarranted ethics investigations are what prompted her to quit. Most Alaskans seem to think she left to get rich. But she also had lost her political base. Republicans had never liked her, Democrats felt betrayed, and everyone believed she was now fixated on the presidency. Today, only about 33 percent of Alaskans hold a favorable view of her. She’s often referred to as “Sarah, Inc.”—just the latest powerful entity seeking to exploit Alaska.


Palin’s departure has had further consequences. Her successor and former lieutenant governor, Sean Parnell, is in many respects her opposite: a pleasant man who makes so little impression that some Republicans call him “Captain Zero.” You don’t imagine him going rogue. But Alaskans seem relieved to have him in charge.

Parnell is also a former oil lobbyist for ConocoPhillips. While serving out Palin’s term, he was a dutiful caretaker of her legacy. But in December, having been elected in his own right, he decided to make some changes, and began by firing the remaining members of the Magnificent Seven. Then, in January, he announced that his top priority was a bill cutting ACES by $2 billion a year. Parnell claims that the tax discourages oil investments in Alaska, although there’s little evidence to back that up. The Resource Development Council for Alaska, a leading business lobbying group, has taken up this cause in earnest. Most legislators give Parnell even odds of succeeding. Everyone agrees that the oil industry is reasserting itself, now that Palin has moved on.

LET’S STOP HERE and go back for a moment to the convention speech—the alchemic moment of excitement and fantasy when Sarah Palin became the star of national politics. Listening to it today, you can practically hear her shift registers, the state figure morphing into a national one, the old Palin becoming the new. She touches on the pipeline, the corruption, how she broke the oil companies’ “monopoly on power” and ended a “culture of self-dealing.” But all of that is overshadowed by the full-throated assault on Barack Obama, rooted in deep cultural resentment, that became the campaign’s ethos and remains Palin’s identity. What resonate are her charges that Obama wanted to “forfeit” the war in Iraq and that he condescended to “working people” with talk of “how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns.”

That didn’t carry her to Washington, but it did reshape the contours of American politics. Today, there aren’t many Republicans of the type Palin was in Alaska; but nearly every Republican seeking the White House strives to evoke the more grievance-driven themes of her convention speech. Regardless of whether she runs too, her influence will be more broadly and deeply felt than anyone else’s. But it’s hard to believe that her party, or her country, or even Palin herself, is better off for that.

What if history had written a different ending? What if she had tried to do for the nation what she did for Alaska? The possibility is tantalizing and not hard to imagine. The week after the Republican convention, Lehman Brothers collapsed, and the whole economy suddenly seemed poised to go down with it. Palin might have been the torchbearer of reform, a role that would have come naturally. Everything about her—the aggressiveness, the gift for articulating resentments, her record and even her old allies in Alaska—would once more have been channeled against a foe worth pursuing. Palin, not Obama, might ultimately have come to represent “Change We Can Believe In.” What had he done that could possibly compare with how she had faced down special interests in Alaska?

Where true Palinism could be most productively applied is on the issues consuming Washington right now: debt and deficits. Palin’s achievement was to pull Alaska out of a dire, corrupt, enduring systemic crisis and return it to fiscal health and prosperity when many people believed that such a thing was impossible. She did this not by hewing to any ideological extreme but by setting a pragmatic course, applying a rigorous practicality to a set of problems that had seemed impervious to solution. She challenged supposedly inviolable political precepts, and embraced more-nuanced realities: Republicans sometimes must confront powerful business interests; to govern effectively, you have to cooperate with the other side; you sometimes must raise taxes to balance a budget; and doing these things can actually enhance rather than destroy your career, whatever anybody says. True reform—not pandering to the base—established Palin’s broad popularity in Alaska. This approach is sorely absent from most of what happens in Washington these days.


You’d of course have to account for her flaws, already evident back home, which would undoubtedly have materialized. But had she run as a reformer, these would have amounted to a character trait—not her defining trait—and one shared by many successful politicians. It’s amazing what the media can see fit to forgive in someone who they are convinced is a true maverick. Just look at her running mate!

But Palin isn’t the type to feel regret. And her choice of a different kind of political celebrity isn’t likely to be her biggest obstacle. Rather, she’ll have to overcome a lack of experience, long odds of winning, and a Republican establishment whose leaders are deeply hostile to the idea of her candidacy. That’s why most people in Washington believe she won’t run. But in Alaska, they’re not so sure. The Palin they knew faced many of the same obstacles, and nothing about her charmed career, from mayor to governor to vice-presidential nominee and finally to global celebrity, suggests to them that she would ever be deterred.

Joshua Green is a former senior editor at The Atlantic.



政治学
萨拉-佩林的悲剧
从萨拉-佩林在共和党大会上的获奖演讲开始，她就被看作是一个不屈不挠的、强硬的、红肉的思想家，很快又被加上 "脸皮薄 "和 "报复性"。但是，看看佩林在阿拉斯加任职时的表现--她唯一的记录--就会发现她是一个非常不同的政治家：她与民主党人合作，驯服大石油公司，解决该州政治核心的大问题。萨拉-佩林可能使国家走上了一条不同的道路。什么地方出错了？

作者：约书亚-格林

2011年6月号
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很难摆脱萨拉-佩林。在脸书和推特上，在有线电视新闻和真人秀节目中，她是一个不断争论的对象，是一些令人不安的大比例政治话语的目标或煽动者。如果她竞选总统--那么，请做好心理准备吧 但是有一个地方，一种集体的决心已经能够把她推到一边，使她成为一个几乎比其他地方更令人窒息的存在：阿拉斯加。

最近在那里旅行的一周时间里，我了解到佩林在大多数阿拉斯加人的心目中占据的位置，大致上就像一场暴风雨婚姻中的前配偶一样：她是一个遥远的坏记忆，关于她的问题似乎隐约不受欢迎。朱诺是阿拉斯加的首府，也是游轮旅游的天堂，游客们很难找到该州最著名的公民的标志--没有 "灰熊妈妈 "纪念品或印有她活泼口号的T恤衫。尽管由于立法机构正在开会，该镇的政治气氛很活跃，但关于佩林的讨论主要围绕着一项传闻，即民主党的民意调查显示她现在在阿拉斯加的受欢迎程度不如奥巴马。我看到的唯一有形的证据是她在国会大厦的官方画像，以及一家看起来很脏的礼品店窗口的一个小牌子，宣传 "萨拉-佩林卫生纸"。阿拉斯加已经向前发展了。


佩林也是如此。在突然辞去州长职务的两年后，她成了一个全国性的人物，在全国各地巡回宣传她的书；只要有需要，她就会就当今的重要问题发表意见；主要通过福克斯新闻网，充当一种特别武断的保守主义品牌的守护者。虽然她仍然住在阿拉斯加，但她已经完全退出了阿拉斯加的公共生活，只是很少露面，而且通常是为了拍摄她的真人秀节目《萨拉-佩林的阿拉斯加》。

但是，如果她决定竞选白宫--她很快就得下定决心--所有这些都将改变。尽管阿拉斯加可能希望忘记萨拉-佩林，以及她，但她在那里的记录，特别是作为州长的记录，将具有新的突出意义。

佩林比大多数高级别政治家更突然地进入了国家意识，而且她是在总统竞选的最后阶段紧张地进行的，这产生了一种类似窑洞的效果，使人们对蒂娜-菲所描绘的那个外省的半傻子或骄傲地领导她的文化战士大军的最初印象变得更加坚硬，这取决于你的观点。在现代政治中，你的 "品牌 "一旦建立，几乎不可能改变。只有少数政治家改变了自己的品牌（希拉里-克林顿就是其中之一），而且是通过不懈的坚持。佩林没有表现出修改或加深这些印象的意愿--她没有回应我关于讨论她的记录的请求--她也没有指定其他人为她做这件事。 (Mama Grizzlies claw; they don't contextualize.)

但在过去的几个月里，佩林已经开始通过访问外国和发表演讲来巩固她的形象，这些演讲颂扬了她作为州长的记录，特别是在能源方面，正如她3月份在印度对国际商业领袖的听众所做的那样。能源问题本应是她在2008年总统竞选中的重要议题，但由于她的失误而被掩盖了。她似乎正在重新介绍自己。

而她可以重新介绍的东西很多--比公众对佩林早已下定决心的想法要多得多，因为他们知道她实际上取得了什么成就。对于她所受到的所有关注，她在公共生活中的角色主张很少成为焦点；更多的时候，它被直接否定了。在任何关于她的候选资格的讨论中，她的批评者对她不能获胜的第一个论点，总是像打赢扑克牌一样被打倒，那就是她放弃了州长的职位。这的确是不可靠的，而且损害了她的机会，但这直接忽略了她在辞职前做了什么，以及这对阿拉斯加的影响。这是个比你想象的更有趣的故事--一个与她今天在阿拉斯加和其他地方的流行看法完全不一致的故事。

作为州长，佩林展示了我们期待的最佳领导人的许多品质。她为了更大的利益而将私人关切放在一边，放弃了对社会问题的关注，以面对困扰阿拉斯加的巨大问题，即腐败的石油和天然气政治。她是以一种今天看来非常不合时宜的方式做到这一点的--与民主党人和温和的共和党人合作，对大企业增税。她在很大程度上成功地解决了，至少在一段时间内，那些似乎无法解决的问题，在这个过程中，使阿拉斯加走上了一条通往财政福利的轨道。自2008年以来，萨拉-佩林影响了她的政党，以及其政治的基调，也许比任何其他共和党人都要多，但其方式几乎与她在阿拉斯加所做的事情截然相反。如果她忠于自己的记录，她可能会将她的政党引向一个非常不同的方向。

在阿拉斯加议会大厦内，悬挂着1969年9月11日《安克雷奇每日新闻》头版的装裱副本，其标题是："阿拉斯加最富有的一天：9亿美元！"--在一张穿着西装、目的明确的男子携带大型公文包并准备躲进一辆汽车的照片上方延伸。公文包里装的是一笔财富，正在赶往机场和旧金山的一家银行，所以阿拉斯加人不会放弃任何一天的利息。这是自一年前在阿拉斯加北坡普拉德霍湾发现大量石油矿藏以来，该州第一次石油租约拍卖的收益，该矿藏至今仍是北美最大的。头条新闻抓住了世界主要石油公司巨额赔款的兴奋点，这笔意外之财几乎在一夜之间改变了该州的政治、经济和自我形象。

在其作为领土和1959年后作为州的大部分历史中，阿拉斯加是一个脆弱的命题，一个贫瘠的前哨，资源丰富但先天不足，因为开采这些资源的外部利益集团并没有留下多少。建州的主要障碍是说服国会相信阿拉斯加不会立即破产。它仍然严重依赖华盛顿的援助，再加上联邦政府拥有其60%的土地所有权（该州本身拥有28%的土地），产生了对联邦权力的强烈不满。这种殖民主义心态因该州政治的强度而得到加强，正如历史学家肯-科茨所指出的那样，这是阿拉斯加等偏远定居点的一个共同特征--想想《蝇王》。

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突然发财带来了各种可能性，但也有可能出现问题。立法机关耗尽了它的财富，却没有满足阿拉斯加人的巨大期望。虽然石油带来了就业和收入，但它也确保了一个长期习惯于经济服从的州将受制于一个强大的新利益。石油对阿拉斯加的重要性超过了电影业对洛杉矶或汽车业对密歇根的重要性。阿拉斯加大学安克雷奇分校的教授斯蒂芬-海科克斯（Stephen Haycox）在《冰冷的怀抱》（Frigid Embrace）中写道："就所有实际情况而言，石油工业是阿拉斯加唯一的私营经济。"

这使该州的命运不仅与石油价格联系在一起，也与主导阿拉斯加的三大巨头的命运联系在一起。英国石油公司、埃克森美孚公司和康菲石油公司。石油税几乎提供了90%的一般收入，因此石油是国家政治的中心舞台。该行业一直试图通过承诺提供就业机会和财富，或者有时威胁要撤回这些就业机会和财富，来哄骗降低税收、减少监管和增加公共投资。

1978年，民主党立法机构试图通过建立企业所得税来确保本州的石油利润份额，但遭到了石油公司的强烈反对，石油公司起诉推翻了该法案。他们在每个地方都输了，包括最后在美国最高法院。但真正的战斗是在州议会进行的。

在20世纪60年代和70年代，石油工业主要为共和党人捐款，但后来意识到它需要更广泛的联盟，并在70年代末也开始追求民主党人。这一策略得到了回报。1981年，石油公司通过他们在立法机构的盟友发动了一场政变，赶走了众议院议长和主要委员会主席。然后，他们取消了企业所得税。在接下来的25年里，石油利益集团几乎不间断地统治着这个州。

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帕林的崛起始于2002年，当时她作为瓦西拉市市长的任期已满，她参加了副州长竞选。她鲜为人知，并得到了大量的资金支持，但她击败了人们的期望，仅以微弱优势败北，并显示出赢得热烈支持的特殊能力。之后，她为弗兰克-穆尔科斯基（Frank Murkowski）竞选，这位四届阿拉斯加参议员回国竞选州长。佩林在州内巡回演讲，介绍穆尔考斯基，并使自己更出名。当他获胜时，她被列入候选名单，以填补他在参议院的剩余任期，甚至还参加了面试。但这个职位被他的女儿丽莎取代了。(佩林在她的回忆录《走向流氓》中酸溜溜地讲述了与新州长会面时的光景。） 佩林得到了阿拉斯加石油和天然气保护委员会主席的低调职位，该监管机构负责确保这些资源的开发符合公众利益。

在她到任时，阿拉斯加的石油和天然气政策以公共利益为导向的观念已经很难维持。该行业控制着该州，尤其是共和党。除了在1989年埃克森-瓦尔迪兹石油泄漏事件发生后对石油税进行了适度的调整外，该禁令一直有效。阿拉斯加人开始以怀疑和焦虑的态度看待这种情况。问题不仅仅是该州从其最宝贵的资源中缺乏收入。这也是石油公司拥有所有权的另一种资源的开发失败。阿拉斯加丰富的天然气供应。人们一直都知道，北坡石油有一天会枯竭。有一天，也许最快在2019年，将没有足够的石油通过跨阿拉斯加管道推进--这是一场灾难，除非该州以某种方式取代收入。由于这个原因，建设天然气管道长期以来一直是政治上的优先事项，而石油公司却对此望而却步。

从她在石油天然气委员会的位置上，佩林在这些焦虑中引发了一场风暴。石油利益和共和党政治不健康混合的一个明显例子是她的同僚、穆尔科斯基任命的兰迪-鲁德里希，他也是州共和党的主席。上任不到一年，鲁德里奇就因为在办公室处理党务而与佩林发生争执（后来发现他向委员会监督的一家公司提供信息）。当他无视佩林的劝告，她向穆尔科夫斯基的工作人员抱怨，但仍然没有任何结果。于是，佩林在给州长的信中提出了她的担忧，并向媒体透露了这一消息。在随后的骚动中，佩林成了英雄，穆尔科斯基别无选择，只能将鲁德里希从委员会中开除。

佩林从一个不可能的地方得到了强有力的支持：民主党人。"她看起来像是一个愿意走不同方向的人，"民主党州参议员霍利斯-弗伦奇告诉我。"我们后来了解到，她会把任何人扔到公车上，但这在当时并不明显。这看起来是真正的道德勇气。"

即便如此，佩林的行为还是被推测为毁掉了她的前景。穆尔科夫斯基和鲁德里奇仍然掌管着这个党。与他们决裂使她作为一个普通的共和党人或石油公司大笔资金的接受者不再可行。为了继续她的崛起，她需要找到另一条道路。只有佩林一个人认为她可以。在这一点上以及其他方面，她展示了所有后来成名的特征：政治的强烈个人化，超强的攻击性，以及接下来的戏剧性的公开姿态。

佩林显然是胜利者（吕德里奇支付了州历史上最大的民事罚款），但她还是退出了委员会。在《流氓》一书中，她只说，作为委员，她受到穆尔科斯基拒绝解除的禁言令的制约。但辞职并没有使禁言令失效。它所做的是将她重新推到聚光灯下，并加强了她的公众形象。这也给了她一个挑战穆尔考斯基的理由。

所有这些都被证明是精明的政治，因为穆尔考斯基的州长职位由于他厚颜无耻的权利感而开始崩溃。在未能说服国土安全部为他购买一架个人飞机（以帮助 "防御、威慑或击败反对势力"）之后，他不顾立法机构的反对，用州政府的资金购买了一架飞机。但是，正是他在处理对该州未来至关重要的事务时，最终为佩林打开了大门。

默科夫斯基下定决心与主要石油生产商达成协议，最终从北坡修建一条天然气管道。他把立法机构排除在外，坚持通过自己的专家团队进行谈判，不为公众所知。这让所有的人都感到愤怒，因为除了他的傲慢之外，穆尔科斯基对石油和天然气有独特的看法，而其他许多人并不认同。

阿拉斯加的政党与其他地方的政党不同--它们更偏向于右翼，主要关注资源开采。主要的哲学分歧，特别是在石油和天然气问题上，是那些认为国家为其生计对石油公司负有责任，并将给予他们几乎任何东西以确保这种生计的人，以及那些认为国家的地位就像一个公共公司的所有者，石油公司的利益与公民股东的利益是分开的，并从属于他们的股东。"佩林的税收专员帕特里克-加尔文（Patrick Galvin）告诉我："石油和天然气在普通的党派政治中占有一席之地。

Murkowski愿意迎合石油生产商的要求，并对其进行保密，这在他的政府中造成了紧张局势，当他在2005年10月宣布他的交易时，这种紧张局势突然爆发出来。这是一个令人震惊的赠品，它将管道的控制权让给了石油公司，只为阿拉斯加人保留了一小部分股份；建立了一个为期30年的低税制，不可能被撤销；对公司的任何事故损失进行赔偿；并将一切豁免于公开记录法。作为交换，该州获得了石油生产税的增长。(佩林后来公布了一份私人备忘录，其中穆尔科斯基的最高经济顾问抱怨说，他 "完全过头了"，并把 "阿拉斯加当作一个香蕉共和国，以确保天然气管道"。） 该协议让步太多，以至于穆尔考斯基的自然资源专员汤姆-欧文公开质疑其合法性--并被立即解雇。欧文的六名助手辞职以示抗议，而 "伟大的七人组 "成为了一个著名的话题。最后，立法机构拒绝了天然气管道交易。但是，在一个转折中，它同意了石油税--这本来是作为一个诱因来通过一揽子计划的其他部分。

佩林站在穆尔科夫斯基的哲学分歧的另一边，并将其作为个人行为。她宣布她将挑战他的州长职位。她抨击了 "秘密天然气管道交易 "和 "跨国石油公司从所有阿拉斯加人拥有的资源中获取令人难以置信的利润"。她把 "全阿拉斯加 "管道作为她竞选的中心。她还宣布她打算雇用汤姆-欧文来谈判这项交易。"她就是我所说的'胡同里的聪明人'，"前民主党州长托尼-诺尔斯告诉我。"这与意识形态无关。她知道如何选择她认为对她想做的事情最有利的政治路线。"

穆尔科夫斯基的税收几乎立即被否定了。就在他签署了新的石油利润税之后，联邦调查局突袭了六位议员的办公室，这成为该州历史上最大的腐败丑闻。在立法会议期间，联邦调查局在朱诺的巴拉诺夫酒店的一个套房里隐藏了一台摄像机，该套房属于比尔-艾伦，他是一个主要的权力经纪人和石油服务公司Veco公司的首席执行官。录像带显示，他与重要的政治家讨论了贿赂问题，并揭露了一群共和党议员的存在，他们自称为 "腐败混蛋俱乐部"，从艾伦和其他人那里接受贿赂。(一些人后来被送进了监狱）。

在共和党初选中，佩林击溃了穆尔科斯基，创造了任何地方现任州长所遭受的最严重的失败之一。她接着又顺利地打发了对石油友好的民主党人诺尔斯，没有什么麻烦。"东海岸的很多人，当他们现在想到萨拉-佩林时，"前州税局说客克里夫-格罗告诉我，"他们会想到一些五个字母的词。吓人。疯狂。愤怒。也许还有其他一些。但在阿拉斯加，人们将她的名字与五个字母联系在一起的词是 "干净"。

帕林已经获得了反复无常、不守纪律、不能胜任工作的声誉。但这不是她作为州长的样子。她一开始就直面阿拉斯加最大的两个问题--天然气管道和石油税，并推动了这两个问题的政策进程。

2006年12月上任后，她信守承诺，聘请了汤姆-欧文和其他 "华丽七人组 "成员。他们制定了一个计划，以吸引石油公司以外的人建造管道，他们竞标出了推进管道的许可证--石油生产商对此深感不满，他们发誓不参与。佩林受到了严重的政治压力。虽然她在《流氓》中没有提及，但美联社发现，副总统迪克-切尼在那个月至少给她打了两次电话。据她的助手说，切尼敦促她做出让步，但她没有。

那年春天，《阿拉斯加煤气管道诱导法》顺利通过，这得益于维科公司丑闻中的刑事起诉书，这些起诉书就在法案提出时被送达。然而，佩林仍是决定性因素。当她接手时，一个新的管道计划似乎不太可能，但她让立法机构专注于这项任务。

她也让自己保持专注：尽管她为自己广为宣传的社会保守主义感到自豪，但她准备在必要时将其放在一边。她没有在社会问题上大动干戈，而是拒绝接受她所赞成的两项限制堕胎的措施，并否决了一项禁止为国家工作人员的同性伴侣提供福利的法案。

接下来是石油税问题。腐败丑闻已经玷污了穆尔科斯基的新法律。联邦调查局对比尔-艾伦的录音带显示，它是贿赂的核心。"很明显，"霍利斯-弗伦奇告诉我，"为了影响这项税收，发生了肮脏的、污秽的事情。" 大多数阿拉斯加人感到厌恶，并愿意重新审视，甚至可能增加该税。但佩林喜欢的操作模式--义无反顾地攻击她的敌人--会使新协议更难达成，而不是更容易达成。明确指控石油利润税是腐败的，将意味着通过石油利润税的（未被起诉的）立法者也是腐败的，而她需要他们的选票。

佩林再次控制住了自己最坏的冲动。当她被卷入这场斗争时，她被证明是灵活和机智的。有两件事最终促使她向前迈进：当税收季节到来时，PPT产生的收入比预期的要少得多；而民主党人不断地询问她，她到底有多大的改革决心。当时和现在一样，佩林对任何轻视都很警惕，她厌恶这种暗示。

9月，她发布了她的提案，为了不让人看走眼，她将其命名为 "阿拉斯加明确和公平的份额"（ACES）。该提案比穆尔科斯基的PPT更有力，但在她的党内却遭到了大部分人的敌视。"一位共和党众议员宣称："我将像天安门广场上的小人物一样挡住你的路，不让你伤害经济。民主党人急于利用公众的愤怒，提出了几个更严厉的替代方案，这些方案在油价上涨时特别具有侵略性，也就是没收性。佩林的重点是在价格低的时候获取更多的收入。

起初，她的团队试图争取共和党人的支持。但很明显，这是不可能的。因此，佩林做了一件在今天看来很难想象的事情：她转向了民主党人。"我们坐下来和她说，'如果你想让一些东西通过，它必须更加强大，'"自由派众议员莱斯-加拉告诉我。"值得称赞的是，她做了她需要的事情，使法案获得通过。"

最后，佩林基本上把民主党人的提案嫁接到她自己的提案上。她签署成为法律的内容远远超出了她最初的提议。ACES对石油利润征收的基础税率比其前身更高。但真正重要的部分是，随着油价的攀升，税率上升得更快、更猛烈--这是民主党人推动的部分。该税种按月而非按年征收，以更好地捕捉价格飙升的机会，而这种情况已经有很多了。ACES还使公司更难申请税收抵免，以清理因其自身疏忽造成的泄漏，正如一些公司在旧制度下所做的那样。

四年后，佩林的天然气生产线还没有开始运作，但这并不是她的错。天然气价格的暴跌使该项目不经济。她的石油税是一个不同的故事：尽管在大多数情况下，ACES的设计是为了获得更多的收入，但ACES筹集的资金几乎比任何人想象的都要多。这主要是因为高油价。但这也表明，该法正在发挥作用。康菲石油公司、英国石油公司和埃克森美孚公司已经报告了创纪录的利润--因此，从某种意义上说，阿拉斯加也是如此。毫不夸张地说，ACES已经使该州成为联盟中财政状况最好的州之一。阿拉斯加现金充裕，编制了大量资本预算，抵御了经济衰退的影响。穆迪公司刚刚将该州的债券评级首次提高到AAA。当其他州在惊人的赤字、预算削减和抗议中挣扎时，阿拉斯加已经建立了120亿美元的盈余，其中大部分归功于佩林的税收。高尔文估计，它比穆尔科夫斯基的税收多筹集了80亿美元。但是，考虑到困扰PPT的腐败问题，一个更好的基准可能是它所取代的税种--在埃克森-瓦尔迪兹石油泄漏事件后被列入账簿的税种。从这个角度来看，佩林的主要成就可能意味着120亿美元的盈余和赤字之间的区别。

萨拉-佩林发生了什么事？一个如此有效地处理了困扰阿拉斯加的两个重大问题的人，怎么会这么快就失宠了？任何人在回顾她的记录时都不禁要问。一个深受民主党人喜爱的改革派州长是如何体现出右翼的怨恨的？

答案的很大一部分是，给她带来最初成功的品质--不屈不挠的精神和解决争端的冲动--在对付穆尔考斯基和石油公司这样不值得一提的敌人时，就不那么令人钦佩了。在阿拉斯加，她将这些品质用于履行使她当选的承诺，并在第一年成为该国最受欢迎的州长。"诺尔斯的民主党战略家安妮塔-邓恩(Anita Dunn)告诉我，"这是非常、非常有力的东西，后来又为巴拉克-奥巴马服务。"她是一个低调但非常有吸引力的人，吸引了很多进步妇女的支持。她是个严肃的人。"

但是，甚至在她离开该州之前，她就让自己被她对广泛的敌人所怀有的许多怨恨所分散了注意力。当我在朱诺时，她的一个前助手弗兰克-贝利的回忆录草稿被泄露给一些政治内部人士，并从其中一个泄露给我。这份手稿令人难忘的地方在于它对佩林以及与她共事的感受的描述。贝利在多年的忠诚服务后被抛在一边，他有一个斧头。但他的描述还是很有说服力的，因为他在书中加入了他保存的佩林和她的工作人员的内部电子邮件。

贝利说，他们的 "头号敌人 "是一位当地的保守派电台主持人，她会听他说上几个小时的话，并大发雷霆。正如贝利提供的这封电子邮件所证明的那样，政治中常见的那种丑陋的谣言是另一种癖好。

发件人：Sarah 莎拉

收件人：莎拉 Scott Heyworth 抄送：Todd Palin

发送时间：2006年1月6日，星期五，上午10:19

主题：托德的儿子 托德的儿子

斯科特。

托德刚刚告诉我，你前段时间和他谈过，并报告说你的一些执法部门的朋友声称Track不是托德的儿子，是一些愚蠢的谎言？这真的让我很反感，也让我很生气。

我现在就想知道是谁说的，谁会对这种事情撒谎，这是那种关于家庭的狗屁谎言，会让我无法竞选州长。我讨厌这种废话。我认为，我的孩子们最近在他们没有参与的非法活动方面被撒谎，这已经够糟糕了。但是一个愚蠢的说法，比如我们的一个孩子不是托德的父亲？

我现在就想知道这个最新的胡说八道是怎么回事，因为我想弄清楚这个垃圾谣言的真相。像这样撒谎的人可能很了解我，知道我总是把家庭放在第一位，如果像这样的丑陋谎言被任何人相信，并对我的丈夫和孩子产生影响，我就会退出比赛，因为让我的家人成为这样的黑暗、丑陋的政治的受害者，是不值得的。

萨拉
佩林痴迷于自己的形象，甚至比大多数政治家更痴迷。据贝利说，她策划了一场运动，用赞美她的假信来淹没报纸。这显然成为一种受宠的策略。贝利甚至包括一封他说她用另一个名字写的信，指责对手约翰-宾克利抄袭她的网站设计。(摘录。"这可能看起来不是什么大事，但没有原创性的想法，把别人的作品归功于自己，这让我们看到了约翰[原文如此]的工作方式。"） 用网络的成语来说，佩林是一个巨魔。

这其中大部分是无害的（如果也是无意义的），不会破坏她的政治生涯。从尼克松到克林顿的政治家们都有过类似的经历，但仍然很成功。但佩林也犯了更严重的违反道德的行为。其中最臭名昭著的是她试图让她的前妹夫（一名州警）被解雇，包括佩林在该州警的老板不服从她的意愿时将其撤职。立法机构的调查发现，在她的一些行为中，她滥用了自己的权力。

佩林似乎被一种提升自己的意愿和对任何试图阻碍她的人的强烈敌意所驱动。但这并不妨碍她成为一个不寻常的有效的州长，只要她还在。至少在重大问题上，她很好地选择了她的敌人，并为该州留下了比大多数人（包括她自己）似乎意识到的或想要相信的更好的状态。奇怪的是，一个如此专注于自己形象的人却没有更好地理解这一点。这也提出了一个问题：她本来可以取得什么成就。

"前资深州经济学家、有影响力的政治通讯《阿拉斯加预算报告》的创始人之一格雷格-埃里克森（Gregg Erickson）告诉我："一再让我震惊的是，她到这里时是如此一心一意。"政治上的业余人士的问题是，他们往往缺乏这种专注。她有这种能力。她在管理员工方面很糟糕，鉴于此，她的成功是令人惊讶的。但在她作为政府工作重点的问题上--石油税和天然气管道--她有好的工作人员，听取他们的意见，并支持他们。毫无疑问，她是一位变革性的州长。如果不是她把个人利益和她作为州长的角色混为一谈的惊人能力，她本可以继续取得巨大的成功。

约翰-麦凯恩的顾问说，他之所以选择佩林，是因为他们认为这场竞选需要动荡。但她吸引他的原因肯定不只是她的性别和活力。佩林刚刚取得了重大的、意想不到的胜利。她挑战了自己党内的腐败现象，对她的职业生涯造成了严重的风险。为此，她大受欢迎。当然，这让麦凯恩想起了与小布什和共和党建制派的旧战，以及他们为他赢得的荣耀。

但麦凯恩和佩林并没有以特立独行的方式参选。相反，他们转向了强硬的右翼。佩林的老同事们都惊呆了。"在共和党大会上的演讲使她成为明星，这实在令人震惊，"弗伦奇告诉我。"她本可以说，'我将为国家做我为阿拉斯加做的事。我将与双方合作，不会在乎想法来自哪里。她的背景支持这一点。相反，他们给了她一个红肉剧本，她从那时起就一直在读。"

选举结束后，佩林回到了州长的位置，但她并没有坚持多久。她说，毫无理由的道德调查是促使她辞职的原因。大多数阿拉斯加人似乎认为她离开是为了致富。但她也失去了她的政治基础。共和党人从来没有喜欢过她，民主党人感到被背叛了，大家都认为她现在一心想要当总统。今天，只有大约33%的阿拉斯加人对她持有好感。她经常被称为 "莎拉公司"--只是寻求利用阿拉斯加的最新强大实体。


佩林的离开产生了进一步的影响。她的继任者、前副州长肖恩-帕内尔（Sean Parnell）在许多方面与她相反：一个讨人喜欢的人，给人留下的印象太少，以至于一些共和党人称他为 "零号船长"。你无法想象他的叛逆行为。但阿拉斯加人似乎对有他负责感到欣慰。

帕内尔也曾是康菲石油公司的石油说客。在为佩林的任期服务期间，他是佩林遗产的尽职守卫者。但在12月，在自己当选后，他决定做出一些改变，并首先解雇了 "华丽七人组 "的其余成员。然后，在1月，他宣布他的首要任务是一项每年削减20亿美元ACES的法案。帕内尔声称，该税种阻碍了对阿拉斯加的石油投资，尽管没有什么证据可以证明这一点。阿拉斯加资源开发委员会，一个主要的商业游说团体，已经认真地开始了这项工作。大多数立法者认为帕内尔成功的几率很小。每个人都同意，现在佩林已经离开了，石油行业正在重新崛起。

让我们停在这里，回过头来看看大会的演讲--当萨拉-佩林成为国家政治的明星时，兴奋和幻想的炼金时刻。今天听她的演讲，你几乎可以听到她的转变，州级人物蜕变为国家级人物，老佩林变成了新的。她谈到了输油管，谈到了腐败，谈到了她如何打破石油公司的 "权力垄断 "并结束了 "自我交易的文化"。但所有这些都被对巴拉克-奥巴马的全面攻击所掩盖，这种攻击植根于深深的文化怨恨，成为竞选活动的精神支柱，也是佩林的身份。引起共鸣的是她的指控，即奥巴马想 "放弃 "伊拉克战争，以及他屈尊于 "劳动人民"，谈论 "他们如何痛苦地坚持他们的宗教和枪支"。

这并没有把她带到华盛顿，但它确实重塑了美国政治的轮廓。今天，像佩林在阿拉斯加那样的共和党人已经不多了；但几乎每一个寻求入主白宫的共和党人都在努力唤起她大会演讲中更多的不满情绪的主题。无论她是否也参选，她的影响将比其他人的影响更广泛、更深刻。但很难相信她的党，或她的国家，甚至是佩林本人，会因此而变得更好。

如果历史写了一个不同的结局呢？如果她曾试图为国家做她为阿拉斯加做的事情呢？这种可能性是诱人的，而且不难想象。共和党大会结束后的一周，雷曼兄弟公司倒闭了，整个经济似乎突然准备跟着倒闭。佩林可能会成为改革的火炬手，这个角色本来是很自然的。她的一切--攻击性、表达怨恨的天赋、她的记录，甚至她在阿拉斯加的老盟友--都会再次被用来对付一个值得追击的敌人。佩林，而不是奥巴马，可能最终会代表 "我们可以相信的变革"。他所做的一切有可能与她在阿拉斯加面对特殊利益集团的方式相比吗？

真正的佩林主义可以最有效地应用在目前消耗华盛顿的问题上：债务和赤字。佩林的成就是将阿拉斯加从一个可怕的、腐败的、持久的系统性危机中拉出来，并使其恢复财政健康和繁荣，而当时许多人认为这样的事情是不可能的。她不是通过坚持任何意识形态的极端，而是通过制定务实的路线，将严格的实用性应用于一系列似乎无法解决的问题。她挑战了所谓的不可侵犯的政治戒律，并接受了更加平衡的现实。共和党人有时必须对抗强大的商业利益；为了有效治理，你必须与另一方合作；你有时必须加税以平衡预算；无论别人怎么说，做这些事情实际上可以提高而不是破坏你的职业生涯。真正的改革--而不是对基础人群的迎合--奠定了佩林在阿拉斯加的广泛人气。这些天在华盛顿发生的大部分事情都没有采用这种方法。


当然，你必须考虑到她的缺陷，这些缺陷在国内已经很明显了，毫无疑问，这些缺陷会变成现实。但是，如果她以改革者的身份参选，这些就会成为她的性格特征，而不是她的决定性特征，而且是许多成功政治家所共有的特征。媒体能在一个他们确信是真正特立独行的人身上看到适合原谅的东西，真是令人惊讶。看看她的竞选伙伴就知道了。

但佩林并不是那种会感到后悔的人。她选择了一个不同类型的政治名人，这不可能是她最大的障碍。相反，她必须克服缺乏经验、获胜几率大以及共和党机构领导人对她的候选资格深怀敌意等问题。这就是为什么华盛顿的大多数人认为她不会参选。但在阿拉斯加，他们并不那么肯定。他们所认识的佩林也面临着许多同样的障碍，从市长到州长，再到副总统候选人，最后到全球名人，她迷人的职业生涯中没有任何东西让他们认为她会被吓倒。

约书亚-格林是《大西洋》杂志的前高级编辑。