The Palin Brand

In the midst of one of the most precipitous political crashes in the Mountain West, Sarah Palin made a mad dash into Boise on Friday, urging the election of a man who had plagiarized his campaign speech from Barack Obama, had been rebuked by the military for misusing the Marine uniform and had called the American territory of Puerto Rico a separate country.

And why not? Vaughn Ward, the Republican congressional candidate from Idaho, has the dubious character trifecta of the Palin brand: bone-headed, defiant and willfully ignorant. When told that Puerto Rico was not a country, he said, “I don’t care what you call it.”

On Tuesday, this Palin protégé was routed in a huge upset, despite a big early lead in the polls, a 6-to-1 fundraising edge and that Friday fly-in by the former half-term governor, who has Idaho roots.

A week ago, Palin backed a candidate for Senate in Washington state, Clint Didier, a former professional football player who also owns a farm and has railed against excessive government spending.

But at the same time Palin was calling Didier “a commonsense constitutional conservative [who] will help put our country on the right track,” it was revealed that he took at least $140,000 in federal farm subsidies. If having his hand out seems inconsistent with his bumper-sticker politics, it follows a familiar pattern of the Palin brand. In Idaho, Ward, the Palin candidate, also blasted government intervention in the private sector, even though his wife, the family breadwinner, earns her living through a mess kept alive by Federal bailouts — Fannie Mae.

In California, Palin has endorsed Carly Fiorina for Senate. Who cares? Well, Palin should. In the 2008 presidential campaign, Palin pledged to “stop multi-million dollar payouts and golden parachutes” to C.E.O.s who run their companies into the ground.

Palin has shown she still has the attention span of a hummingbird on a nectar jag.

After having steered Hewlett-Packard into a ditch, with the stock plunging 50 percent and 20,000 real Americans forced into layoffs, Fiorina walked away with about $45 million.

Between surreal appearances from Wasilla as the caged pundit of Fox News and quick, splashy landings in the lower 48 states, Palin has shown she still has the attention span of a hummingbird on a nectar jag. She does not do basic homework. Never has. The result is a string of endorsements for people whose lives are living contradictions of their stated philosophies.

Palin could have served out a single term as Alaska governor, leaving a public service legacy while boning up on the issues. As depicted in the book “Game Change,” what Palin wanted more than anything was to be loved in Alaska.

Todd and Sarah Palin “continued to be far more preoccupied by her status in Alaska than just about anything else,” write the book’s authors, John Heilemann and Mark Halperin. “Any issue related to the state put them on high alert, and incited some of their worst propensities toward parsimoniousness with the truth.”

But in deciding to get rich quick, the demi-governor has ditched whatever grounding she may have had in what Bush aides dismissed as the “reality-based community,” and lost her way in the Last Frontier State. Her brand is toast there, as well.

Not long ago, she was most popular governor in the United States, with approval ratings in Alaska that crossed party lines and races. Earlier this month, a Rasmussen poll found that 50 percent of those surveyed in Alaska now have an unfavorable view of Palin, and a plurality of her fellow Alaskans would not vote for her for president.

A valedictory, of sorts, was sounded on Palin by Walter Hickel, the former governor and dean of Alaska Republicans, who died this month. Though he backed Palin for governor in 2006, by 2009 he was disgusted with her, particularly how she went running after the ephemera of celebrity.

“She fell in love with the national spotlight and lost her ethical compass,” Hickel said in one of his final interviews.

Of late, whenever a candidate with the Palin blessing blows up, she blames it on the “lamestream media,” not personal responsibility. It’s a curious claim, coming from a person who said she studied journalism in college, but is appalled by real journalism.

The attacks on her man in Idaho, Palin told a half-empty arena in Boise on Friday, were “a violation of our press freedom.” In fact, it was the press — led by the venerable Idaho Statesman newspaper — simply doing the thankless job of trying to keep politicians honest. The real piling on came from Idaho conservative bloggers, who were unrelenting in pointing out how the Palin candidate lifted his campaign speech almost word-for-word from Obama’s stirring 2004 Democratic convention address.
Nikki Haley,

Similarly, in the randy state of South Carolina, it was not the despised traditional media that published allegations that Palin’s pick for governor, Nikki Haley, had an affair with a former co-worker at the governor’s office. Haley has denied the claim, which seems mired in the murk of the Palmetto State’s baroque politics of sex.

But the point is that it was a conservative blogger and self-described Haley backer, Will Folks, who made the charge, not some old fuddy-duddy, fact-obsessed lamestream media outfit.

It’s early in the campaign season, but these car wrecks on the Palin highway are piling up. As for the Palin brand, it seems to represent no consistent philosophy, no guiding principles, no remedial vetting. It stands for one thing — Palin — and in that sense, she does have a legacy, though it can only be measured in dollars.