Mark Leibovich, of the New York Times, wrote an interesting piece on Governor Palin. He hints at what many of us saw the night of Sarah Palin speech at the Republican National Convention: the political superpower!
Washington, DC — Without leaving home, Sarah Palin will be able to reach much of her political base, courtesy of a soon-to-be-built television studio in her living room paid for by her newest media patron, Fox News. From her house in Wasilla, Alaska, Ms. Palin also sends missives to 1.3 million Facebook “fans,” writes newspaper columns, Tweets and signs copies of her book for donors. […]
Her growing cast of advisers and support system could be working in the service of any number of goals: a presidential run, a de facto role as the leader of the Tea Party movement, a lucrative career as a roving media entity — or all of the above. Ms. Palin represents a new breed of unelected public figure operating in an environment in which politics, news media and celebrity are fused as never before. Whether she ever runs for anything else, Ms. Palin has already achieved a status that has become an end in itself: access to an electronic bully pulpit, a staff to guide her, an enormous income and none of the bother or accountability of having to govern or campaign for office.
“Few public figures not in office have leveraged the nexus between media and political positioning as Sarah Palin has,” said the Washington lawyer Robert Barnett (who negotiated, among other things, Ms. Palin’s lucrative deal with Fox News, an arrangement with the Washington Speaker’s Bureau that pays her a reported $100,000 a pop, and a deal with Harper Collins to write her memoir, “Going Rogue,” which has already earned her upward of eight figures).
Beyond what her Fox-watchers and Facebookers can see, Ms. Palin is quietly assembling the infrastructure of an expanding political operation. In addition to her longtime spokeswoman, Meghan Stapleton, Ms. Palin’s closest aides include members of her former running mate’s staff. Her current operations chief, Jason Recher, was a loyal lieutenant on Ms. Palin’s campaign plane — loyal to a point where some top McCain aides believed he was encouraging Ms. Palin’s “rogue” behavior. (According to internal campaign e-mail messages provided by a former top McCain aide, campaign officials considered firing Mr. Recher in October 2008 over “unacceptable” and “unprofessional” conduct during a rough swing through New Hampshire and Maine.) […]
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