I recommend this article by Noam Scheiber from The New Republic on Sarah Palin. It is a very absorbing and beautifully researched story about Sarah Palin's rise in Wasilla.
The overall impression is of someone who resents those she sees as of a "higher class" and of "higher intellect", hold grudges, pursues vendettas and is unlikely to change:
Kilkenny (a local activist whose email about Palin has become famous) initially supported Palin. But, once the mayor bludgeoned the town librarian about book-banning, Kilkenny and a group of concerned residents held a meeting to mull a possible recall. After much debate, they decided to help Palin become a better mayor instead.
The group's efforts reflected a kind of establishment delusion--the hope that if you just surround the rough-hewn outsider with the right advisers and submerge her in the proper environment, she'll eventually assimilate. It's a delusion that's playing out all over again on the McCain campaign, amid all the briefings with the likes of Henry Kissinger and Joe Lieberman. Give Palin a few months in the Old Executive Office Building, the thinking goes, and she'll become Adlai Stevenson. But it never quite works out that way.
As Nixon demonstrated, the forces of class resentment can be allconsuming and elemental.
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