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      ‘She paved the way for Trump’: will Sarah Palin stay in the Republican spotlight?

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      ‘She paved the way for Trump’: will Sarah Palin stay in the Republican spotlight? Palin’s return to the headlines – for her defamation trial and flouting Covid rules – is a reminder to many that her ascent in 2008 was a pivotal moment in US politics Removing a white face mask as she took the witness stand behind a Plexiglass shield, Sarah Palin likened herself to the biblical David taking on the mighty Goliath of American media, the New York Times newspaper.The 58-year-old’s appearance in a Manhattan courtroom this week was a far cry from her heyday on the campaign trail, whipping up crowds with incendiary rhetoric as a US vice-presidential candidate in 2008.‘Trump is not my God’: how the former president’s only vaccine victory turned sourRead moreBut in making her pitch to a jury – the only nine voters who matter this time – Palin still had a star power, and reflex for bashing the media, that served as a reminder of how she paved the populist way for Donald Trump.And when the former governor of Alaska was asked whether she might run for office again, she teased a back-to-the-future scenario for the Republican party and America. “The door’s always open,” she told the court.Anyone wondering, “Whatever happened to Sarah Palin?” has not been paying attention to headlines of late. She declared that she would get the coronavirus vaccine “over my dead body”, duly tested positive for Covid-19 and went dining out in New York anyway, flouting public health guidelines.The infection did cause a delay in her defamation trial against the New York Times, which published a 2017 editorial that incorrectly linked Palin to a mass shooting six years earlier (it corrected the editorial the following day but she contends that the correction did not go far enough).Once the trial got under way, Palin told jurors she was “mortified” by the mistake and called the Times “the be-all, end-all, the loud voice in American media”. She said: “It was devastating to read a false accusation that I had anything to do with murder. I felt powerless – that I was up against Goliath. The people were David. I was David.”But she faces an uphill battle against a paper that has not lost a defamation case in more than half a century. She must convince jurors that the Times acted with “actual malice”, meaning that it knew the editorial was false or had reckless disregard for the truth.The court has heard Palin – she and husband Todd divorced in 2020 after 31 years – describe herself as a single mother and grandmother who “holds down the fort” for her family in Alaska when not advising candidates about “the good, bad and ugly” of politics. She also recalled the surprise over her eruption on the national political stage in 2008, saying: “I don’t think they were prepared for me.”That is an understatement. Palin was a wildly improbable choice back then as running mate for Republican John McCain in the contest with Democrat Barack Obama, bidding to become the first Black president, and his running mate, Joe Biden.The ascent of Palin – going outside what had been deemed an acceptable talent pool in terms of experience and judgment – is now seen as a pivotal moment in American political history, opening a Pandora’s box of divisive, nativist, anti-intellectual, celebrity-driven smash-mouth politics.Steve Schmidt, then a senior adviser to the McCain campaign, was the first to float the idea of Palin as running mate. In an interview with the Guardian, Schmidt said his exact words were: “We should take a look at Sarah Palin. I don’t know a lot about her other than she’s the most popular governor in the country with an 87% approval level.”So it was that in August 2008 McCain invited Palin to his ranch in Sedona, Arizona, to consider the bold move. Schmidt recalled: “Mark Salter [another adviser] and I are there with McCain, and McCain says, ‘Come on, boys, let’s go talk to her.’“I said to him, ‘It’s completely inappropriate for us to be in this meeting. This is a presidential-level decision. Only you can make the determination she’s prepared to take the 35-word oath and become president.’”So Schmidt and Salter did not attend. “The singularly greatest regret of my life,” Schmidt acknowledged this week. “It’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.”He is convinced that, had they been in the room, they would have immediately realized how unprepared and unqualified Palin was and done everything in their power to talk McCain out of it.“No one will ever know what the discussion was,” continued Schmidt, a co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. “There were two people in the room: him and her. I’m fairly certain if there was a substantive conversation that I was party to I would’ve chained myself to the back of the bumper to stop her from being announced.“I’ve never encountered a person and I’ve never experienced in my political career someone so abjectly dishonest. You could not get a straight answer on a question on the most basic informational level, which was my initial warning sign about her in the hours after McCain picked her.”McCain’s impulsive and fateful decision – for which he later expressed regret – is chronicled in a new book, Insurgency: How Republicans Lost Their Party and Got Everything They Ever Wanted, by Jeremy Peters. He writes: “McCain turned to his wife, Cindy. ‘John, it’s a gamble,’ she said.“This made McCain’s face light up. ‘Well, I wish you hadn’t said that,’ he said. McCain, an avid craps player, balled up his fist and blew on it, then shook it like he was about to roll a pair of dice. ‘Fuck it,’ he said. ‘Let’s do it.’”The gamble backfired as McCain still lost the election and, in the eyes of critics, tainted his legacy by accelerating the Trumpification of the Republican party. During the campaign Palin’s ignorance became clear as she stumbled over basic questions such as what newspapers and magazines she read.She accused Obama of “palling around with terrorists” and used the term “shuck and jive” to portray him as evasive and dishonest. (She later wrote on Facebook: “For the record, there was nothing remotely racist in my use of the phrase ‘shuck and jive’.”)Peters, a journalist at the New York Times, said in an interview: “She is the tip of the spear for Donald Trump and everything he unleashed in American politics. Like Trump, her appeal to her supporters was as much about who her perceived enemies were and as it was about her herself.“She also had a really intuitive sense of how to go into combat with those enemies, especially the media. She was the canary in the coalmine when it came to doing lasting damage to the reputation of the mainstream media, which had already been taking a beating but had never been made into a real political enemy to the extent it would be under under Trump.”Palin’s loose talk of the media “making things up” and claims that it should “quit lying” foreshadowed Trump’s popularisation of phrases such as “‘enemy of the people” and “fake news”.Peters added: “She also had a real sense for social media and using that to basically say whatever she wanted and get attention that wouldn’t require her to go to the mainstream media, because the mainstream media would then just cover whatever she said on Facebook.”Palin went on to campaign for the Tea Party, a conservative revolt fuelled by rage against elites, distrust in government and racial hostility to Obama. It was another harbinger of the “Make America Great Again” white grievance movement.Palin had a five-year stint as a contributor to the conservative Fox News channel on a reported $1m contract, endorsed Trump for president and, emulating his past career as a reality TV star, made a surprise appearance on The Masked Singer, rapping and dancing in a pink bear costume.Now, should she pull off an unlikely legal victory over his old foe the New York Times – a judgment that could have a chilling effect on freedom of the press – Trump would probably be the first to congratulate her. What he may never grasp is the political debt he owes her.Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “Would there be a Donald Trump without Sarah Palin? It’s hard to imagine Trump coming out of nowhere. Sarah Palin paved the way for Donald Trump.”Last year Palin hinted at an Alaska Senate run against Republican moderate Lisa Murkowski. If Trump regains the White House in 2024, she might find another comeback path. Jacobs admitted: “I find it impossible to make predictions about a Republican party that has veered so far to the extreme, so far towards irresponsibility.“This is a party without a measure of itself. It’s a chaotic party that no longer has core principles so yes, I could see Palin ending up in the cabinet if she were able to rehabilitate herself and find a way to become relevant again.”TopicsSarah PalinThe ObserverRepublicansUS politicsNew York TimesfeaturesReuse this content More

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      ‘Let’s do it’: John McCain knew Palin VP pick was a huge gamble, new book says

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      ‘Let’s do it’: John McCain knew Palin VP pick was a huge gamble, new book saysReporter says 2008 Republican nominee mimed rolling dice and said ‘Fuck it’ before picking hard-right Trump precursor Deciding to pick the inexperienced and extreme Sarah Palin as his running mate – a choice many say facilitated the rise of Donald Trump, threatening US democracy itself – John McCain mimed rolling a pair of dice and said: “Fuck it. Let’s do it.”Reuse this content More

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      Laugh at Sarah Palin all you want but there’s nothing funny about her role in dividing the US | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Laugh at Sarah Palin all you want but there’s nothing funny about her role in dividing the USArwa MahdawiShe may be in the news for running around New York with Covid, but it’s worth remembering how she spread another sort of virus: rightwing populism Sign up for the Week in Patriarchy, a newsletter on feminism and sexism sent every Saturday.Underestimate Sarah Palin at your perilHelp! I am writing from beleaguered New York City which, on top of dealing with giant rats, a nasty nor’easter, and the surreal “swagger’”of a Bitcoin-obsessed mayor, is also battling a Palinvasion. Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska, has spent the past week running around the city eating at multiple fancy restaurants despite the fact that she has tested positive for Covid-19. Palin, who isn’t vaccinated and has said “it’ll be over my dead body that I’ll have to get a shot,” has now become something of a public health hazard: New Yorkers are being told to go get themselves tested if they’ve been anywhere near her.Palin, it should be said, didn’t just come to New York for the food. She’s in the city because she’s suing the New York Times for defamation. The trial was supposed to start on Monday but because of the whole being-infected-with-a-highly-contagious-virus thing it’s been pushed back until 3 February. When it gets going I’m afraid you’re going be hearing a lot more about Palin. This case, to put it in highly technical legal jargon, is kind of a big deal and has massive implications for press freedom in the US.Some quick background: in 2017 the Times published a piece that incorrectly linked an advert put out by Palin’s political action committee with a 2011 mass shooting in Arizona in which six people died and 14 were wounded – including Gabrielle Giffords, then a Democratic member of Congress. The Times was very much in the wrong here, which it quickly admitted in a correction. That wasn’t enough for Palin, who is seeking damages. (It’s not clear exactly how much, but court papers estimate $421,000 in damage to her reputation.)It’s highly unlikely that Palin will win. Thanks to a 58-year-old landmark decision called New York Times v Sullivan there is a high bar for defamation when it comes to public figures: you have to prove an outlet operated with “actual malice”. However if the case ever ends up in the supreme court there’s a not-insignificant chance that Times v Sullivan could be overruled. Two conservative supreme court judges, Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, have already made it clear that they are keen to rethink the decision and make it easier to sue the media. This would be a dream come true for people like Donald Trump who, while he was running for president, said he wanted to open up libel laws so he could sue people who wrote nasty stories about him.The media should obviously be held accountable for mistakes in their reporting. However creating an environment in which news outlets are afraid to report on powerful people because they’re worried about being sued is obviously not a good thing for democracy. And Palin doesn’t need to win the actual court case against the Times to score a victory against the media and undermine press freedom. As first amendment attorney Ted Boutrous told CNN: “This lawsuit has always seemed to me to be part of a disturbing trend in recent years of high-profile political figures misusing libel suits as political stunts intended to chill speech on matters of public concern – exactly what the first amendment forbids.”Long story short here is that you should not underestimate the harm Palin is capable of causing. Palin is often treated as a figure of fun by the media; she’s caricatured as a ditzy naif. But that image of her isn’t entirely accurate. You know that famous quote that’s attributed to her? The one where she said she could see Russia from her house? One survey found that almost seven in 10 Americans think she actually said that. She didn’t. Tina Fey did in a Saturday Night Live skit. What Palin actually said was that you can actually see Russia from an island in Alaska: this is perfectly accurate.I’m not trying to defend Palin’s honour here or make her out to be some kind of rocket scientist or master political strategist. What I’m saying is that she’s not the simplistic caricature she is often portrayed to be. And while she may be in the news for running around New York with Covid, it’s worth remembering the enormous part she has played in spreading another sort of virus in America: rightwing populism. As Barack Obama has noted there is a “straight line” from Palin being announced as the vice-presidential nominee in 2008 to Trumpism. Laugh at Palin all you want but there’s nothing funny about the role she has played in shaping the divided and angry United States that exists today.A 37-year-old Polish woman died after being refused an abortionThis distressing story is a reminder of how safe abortions help save lives. Outlawing abortion isn’t ‘pro-life’, it’s simply anti-women. The death of Agnieszka T has ignited protests across Poland against the draconian abortion restrictions that were introduced a year ago.The untold story of Susy Thunder, ‘the great lost female hacker of the 1980s’A fascinating story about a woman who pioneered techniques still widely used by hackers today. The fact you’ve probably never heard of her, and she’s now able to live a quiet life collecting coins, is testament to how good she was at her craft. She was never caught. Gotta hope the success of this profile on her doesn’t suddenly blow her life up.New study: giving cash to poor mothers increases brain activity in babiesWho would have thought that ensuring babies have enough to eat might be good for them? Can’t wait for the pro-life crowd to get behind this!House committee in Florida passes ‘Don’t Say Gay’ billYes, that’s what it’s really called. Florida wants to ban teachers from talking about things like sexuality and gender identity in school classrooms. A report from the Trevor Project found that LGBTQ+ youth who learned about LGBTQ+ people or issues in school had 23% lower odds of reporting a suicide attempt in the last year.Tennessee school board bans Pulitzer prize-winning Holocaust novelThings in American schools are very normal and not terrifying at all.Italian job advert demands you send in a swimsuit photo“We ask that you send a full photo in a bathing suit or similar,” the advert for the €500-a-month receptionist job read. Other requirements for the role? Be a woman under 30. The Italian labour ministry is now investigating.The week in praytriarchyIt would appear that nothing is sacred anymore. According to Buzzfeed, venture capitalists are flocking to invest in Christian worship apps so they can get their hands on the user data. Remember: god is always watching … and so are data brokers.
      Arwa Mahdawi’s new book, Strong Female Lead, is available for order
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      Top 10 books about US presidents | Claude A Clegg III

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      Top 10 books about US presidentsFrom the anguish of Lincoln to the showbiz of Reagan and Obama’s introspection, these books show the power and helplessness of America’s commanders-in-chief The US presidency was supposed to be something different, something novel, compared with the fossilised monarchical rule that it supplanted after the American revolution. Born of Enlightenment theory, settler colonialism and 18th-century warfare, the US constitution gave the chief executive primarily an enforcement role, with the authority to lead armed forces in the event of foreign encroachment or domestic unrest but stripped of the capacity to legislate or issue judicial decisions. The architects of the new republic meant for the president to preside over a citizenry well-endowed with rights, not to rule over cowed subjects.Chief executives from George Washington and Abraham Lincoln to Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan have been sorely tested by both the responsibilities and the limitations of the country’s highest, loneliest office. Through civil war, economic catastrophes, foreign misadventures, social upheavals and plagues, the presidency has endured, but it – and the 45 men who have occupied the job – has been moulded and often humbled by the promise and perils of the office.Is the US presidency – indeed, American democracy – equal to the dire challenges of the 21st century? One could certainly argue that it isn’t, based on the ongoing bungling of the Covid-19 response, the horrifying (and presidentially inspired) insurrection of 6 January 2021 and the glacially slow and fickle efforts to address everything from climate change to widening social inequality. If the founding fathers meant to circumscribe the power of the presidency out of a well-founded fear of kingly abuses, then they would surely comprehend the creeping threat that authoritarianism and political extremism present to the US system of government today. Nevertheless, they probably could not have guessed that the hard lessons that they had learned about the fragility of democracy would be so fiercely resisted or blithely ignored more than two centuries after they beseeched a patrician general from the Virginia countryside to preside over their fledgling experiment in government by the people.Of the many works that I have found useful in thinking about the history of the US presidency and for writing my newest book, The Black President: Hope and Fury in the Age of Obama, these 10 have been among the most helpful. They are a mix of biographies, memoirs and reportage which, taken together, represent some of the best writings by and about the small group of powerful people who have occupied the White House.1. Never Caught: The Washingtons’ Relentless Pursuit of Their Runaway Slave, Ona Judge by Erica Armstrong Dunbar (2017)Dunbar’s important book is less a biography of George Washington, Martha Washington, or Ona Judge, the runaway enslaved woman whom the first couple made such extraordinary efforts to recapture, than a look into the power and privilege of a slaveholding elite forcing its way through a new republic rhetorically committed to liberty. The relentless pursuit of Judge by the Washingtons after her bold flight from the new US capital in Philadelphia is expertly told by Dunbar.2. The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family by Annette Gordon-Reed (2008)This history of overlapping, intertwined families vivifies the world around Thomas Jefferson, the third US president, while skilfully making more legible the travails and aspirations of the enslaved people on his storied estate at Monticello. The decades-long relationship between Jefferson and Sally Hemings, one of the Black women he owned and who bore several of his children, occupies the core of the book, but Gordon-Reed manages to craft a complicated and often contradictory history that extends far beyond the tangle of race, gender, and status that marked the Jeffersons and the Hemingses’ commingled journey through US history.3. Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin (2005)This book follows the intersecting biographical tributaries of the powerful, ambitious men whom Abraham Lincoln, the nation’s 16th president, was able to steer toward the rushing river of his own turbulent civil war presidency. Lincoln as political strategist and savvy tactician is the frame that Goodwin points up most dramatically. But the book also succeeds at conveying Lincoln as a beleaguered and empathic head of state whose mettle is tried time and again by those around him and news from the battlefield.4. Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S Grant (1885-1886)Rightly considered by many historians and literary critics as among the best of presidential autobiographies, this book was completed a generation after the Confederate surrender at Appomattox as Grant succumbed to a slow strangulation by throat cancer in the 1880s. The memoirs provide a vantage point on the nation’s bloodiest and most defining conflict that only a soldier elemental to the war and its aftermath could offer.5. Theodore Rex by Edmund Morris (2001)As the best biographical volume on America’s 26th president, Theodore Roosevelt, Morris’s book draws bold-coloured portraits of outsized historical figures, with equally knowing shades of nuance and frailty. Morris has the contextual eye of the historian and sets scenes that are alive and convincing. He also conveys mood and meaning as well as any novelist.6. Franklin D Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932-1940 by William Leuchtenburg (1963)Dated, frayed, and surpassed by newer research and more eloquent storytellers, Leuchtenburg’s volume on the first two presidential terms of Franklin Roosevelt still stands the test of time as a scholarly, well-researched, and jargon-free narration of arguably the most consequential presidency of the 20th century. It is the tale of the rise of the liberal welfare state against the backdrop of the Great Depression and the gathering clouds of world war. Leuchtenburg tells the story well and sets the standard for future researchers.7. The Making of the President, 1960 by Theodore White (1961)White’s fascinating chronicle of the 1960 presidential race is the starting point of quality, book-length journalistic coverage of modern American politics. Writing in the moment, White had an eye for discerning the essential character of men such as John F Kennedy and Richard Nixon who sought the country’s highest office, even as the media ecosystem of his day made such discernment more difficult to achieve.8. Sleepwalking Through History: America in the Reagan Years by Haynes Johnson (1991)Johnson captures the zeitgeist of the 1980s by juxtaposing the countervailing forces of American optimism – or the desperate need of many Americans to again believe in their scandal-wracked government – against the greed, corruption, militarism and debt that threatened to unmask the soothing myths of American exceptionalism. At the centre of Johnson’s story is a self-made man, an actor by training and temperament who through force of will, theatrics – and a good dose of luck – led the country through domestic and external perils whose ramifications are still being felt today.Top 10 books about the Roman empire | Greg WoolfRead more9. Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama (1995)Of Obama’s autobiographical writings, this one provides the best understanding of his origins and burgeoning sense of self. His early and more frank ruminations on race are present here, and the book is not encumbered by the exigencies of political campaigning. At once a memoir, travelogue and deeply introspec­tive meditation, it is a fluent self-study of his efforts to reconcile himself with his eclectic lineage and to discover his place and pur­pose in the world.10. Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin (2010)The essential volume on the 2008 presidential primaries and general election. Heilemann and Halperin had generous access to many of the historical players – including Barack Obama, John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin – and their staffs. It is a fast-paced, even breathless read, and anyone who paid even casual attention at the time to the historic events chronicled here will recognise its richly drawn characters, plotlines and twists of fate.
      The Black President: Hope and Fury in the Age of Obama by Claude A Clegg III is published by Johns Hopkins University Press. To help the Guardian and Observer, order your copy from the Guardian bookshop. Delivery charges may apply.
      TopicsHistory booksTop 10sPolitics booksUS politicsAbraham LincolnFranklin D RooseveltJohn F KennedyRichard NixonfeaturesReuse this content More