COMMENTARY | Sarah Palin's favorability numbers have been falling for the past few months, but she still insists it's too early to say whether or not she will run for president in 2012. But what is really keeping her from announcing her candidacy? Could it be that book that's coming out in May?
The book, a tell-all from former Palin political insider Frank Bailey, an airline executive who joined her gubernatorial campaign in 2006, reportedly paints Palin as a vindictive, manipulative and petty administrator who became obsessed with perceived injustices and attempted to use her position of power to go after those opposed to her. A draft copy of the book, tentatively entitled "In Blind Allegiance To Sarah Palin," was leaked to the Anchorage Daily News in February also contains allegations about Troopergate, where Palin allegedly tried to get her ex-brother-in-law fired after he divorced her sister. Another segment alleges Palin broke Alaska campaign laws while running for governor.
That is just the leaked version. A draft copy. Although the book's co-authors, writer Ken Morris and anti-Palin website creator Jeanne Devon, got a cease-and-desist order against publishing parts of the book, the Daily News released some of its juicier elements.
Bailey said he first joined up with Palin because he admired how she had confronted the established Republican political machine in Alaska. He believed "Sarah Palin had God's blessing and people's love and faith." The reality, he claimed, was far different.
Pam Pryor, a spokeswoman for Palin's political action committee, told the Daily News in an email, "Doubt she will respond to this kind of untruth."
That was in February. If Palin's poll numbers continue to drop, more bad press, even from material which she can publicly dismiss (or not) as originating from disgruntled former associates and an all too complicit media, might do irreparable damage to her political aspirations. She will still have to weather the storm of the book's publication, at least for a few weeks while the three authors do a promotional circuit on all the radio and television talk shows.
Bad press generally leads to lower support in the polls.
Palin will still have most of June to try to get her favorability numbers up and decide if she will run for president. If she doesn't, she'll have plenty of time to refute Frank Bailey's claims -- or obsess and prove him right.
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