Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin speaks at a dinner celebrating former U.S. president Ronald Reagan on the centennial of his birth, at the Reagan Ranch Center in Santa Barbara, California on February 4, 2011. The dinner was hosted by the Young America's Foundation (YAF). Reagan, who died in 2004 at the age of 93, would have been 100 years old on February 6. UPI/Jim Ruymen |
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WASHINGTON, Feb. 22 (UPI) -- A new book by a former aide to former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin includes e-mails showing how focused she was on her national image, the manuscript indicates.
The unpublished manuscript reveals Palin, during her campaign for governor, wrote vainglorious letters-to-the-editor that were to be sent under other people's names, Politico reported Tuesday. The manuscript also quoted Palin as vowing to avoid appearances on any network except Fox News, calling other networks "the bad guys."
Palin, who resigned as governor in midterm and was the 2008 GOP vice presidential nominee, is now a commentator for Fox News.
The content of the unpublished manuscript, "In Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin: A Memoir of our Tumultuous Years," written by ex-aide Frank Bailey, first was reported by the Anchorage Daily News.
A Palin supporter confirmed to Politico that Bailey and Palin corresponded and that the former aide had access to Palin's passwords and her e-mail account. But the Palin ally said the manuscript should be considered with the caveat that Bailey was "the quintessential disgruntled employee" who didn't get senior jobs he sought and was cut out of Palin's vice presidential campaign, among other things.
Besides his take on Palin's rise in Alaska, Bailey, a former Alaska Airlines manager who worked on Palin's 2006 gubernatorial campaign, includes dozens of e-mails he purports are from Palin that paint her in a bad light, with her own words doing the most harm, Politico said.
Just months after she and Sen. John McCain of Arizona had lost the presidential race, Palin is portrayed as tired of criticism and focused more on her national image rather than Alaska issues.
"I hate this damn job," she wrote in an April 2009 e-mail to Bailey and another confidante.
In the months before she resigned the governorship, her poll numbers sagging, Palin's advisers tried to make the unsubstantiated case that she was being targeted by the White House and Democratic National Committee, Politico reported the manuscript as indicating. Palin appeared to think the same, but acknowledged the lack of evidence.
"We have no smoking gun that proves we're being targeted by the bad guys, so it probably sounds to many like I'm a whining b---- who stubbornly refuses to govern in the public's best interest," Bailey said she she wrote in an e-mail to her closest advisers.
