The search for authentic leaders in America is frustrating. It shouldn’t be. All we ask is for is honesty and integrity. If, for example, you are going to build your claim to national leadership on bridging the gap between “the two Americas,” don’t take a lucrative job with a hedge fund as soon as the campaign’s over, like John Edwards. Or, if you are going to make eloquent paeans to honesty and integrity, you should resist the impulse to have an affair with a campaign worker behind the back of your terminally ill and devoted wife, get your mistress pregnant, then lie about it and cover it up by persuading a married campaign aide to claim the love child as his while a major donor pays the mistress to go into hiding.
Like John Edwards. But I digress.
Well, not completely. Edwards was the most recent epitome of the tin-coated phony who was constantly sending out clues that he was not what he pretended to be, yet still managed to fool most of the people most of the time. That is, apparently, until Sarah Palin came on the scene. In her case, the clues are piling up.
Today it is being reliably reported that Palin’s book tour of America, in which she supposedly is traveling by bus, like a good populist, hither and yon to the heart of middle America, is a publicist’s charade. USA Today reported that Palin would be “making two and sometimes three stops a day, traveling in a bus painted with the cover of her book.” Palin has given televised interviews from inside the bus, a la John McCain’s famous Campaign 2000 interviews from the “Straight Talk Express” (which he actually rode). She is shown on the news arriving at her destinations from the bus. All pretense and deception. Palin, it seems, has been traveling to her destinations on a $4,000 an hour Gulfstream American twin-jet since the book tour began November 18, while her staff and entourage get the bus experience. The bus picks her up at the airport.
As investigative reporter and best-selling author Joe McGinniss writes regarding Palin’s travel schedule, there is nothing wrong with her flying. There is a great deal wrong, however, with pretending to be bussing it, which can be fairly described as a hoax, like Rosie Ruiz pretending to run the Boston Marathon and “winning” by driving herself most of the 26 miles and then jumping out at the head of the pack. Palin’s PR about the tour is a lie, her statements about the tour are a lie (She has said on Facebook that she would be posting “on the road”) and her adopted image as “Sarah six-pack” is a lie.
What does that make her?
Her supporters claim to admire her because “she is who she is.” This incident ought to sound a Palin alarm, which sounds a lot like an Edwards alarm. I don’t want to hear about how the press is picking on her and looking for dirt. It does pick on her, but that’s irrelevant here. Trustworthy leaders who care about integrity and who respect the public don’t pull elaborate (and dumb) stunts like this.
But phonies do.
Ethics Alarms 
For over a year, websites like http://www.Palingates.blogspot.com and http://www.TheMudflats.net and others have been following closely and exposing Sarah Palin for the manipulator and fabricator that she is. Now that “Going Rogue” is out and Palin has broken free of elected office, the world is finally catching on to what this woman is truly all about.
There is much more to the Palin story and the next months will be interesting, to say the least.
Palingates actually first broke the story of the fake bus tour. Blogs devoted to gathering negative intelligence on public figures I generally avoid, because they have no motivation to report positive facts that play against their mission. I think manipulator and fabricators may be right…they are very different, however, from “moron,” “hick” and “ignoramus.” “Manipulator” is a common leadership trait, even among the best. Fabricator, however, we don’t need. The next months will be interesting, but hardly unpredicatable. Sarah will flame out. Bet on it.
Unfortunately, this sort of thing just reinforces my perception that she isn’t really fit for the presidency of the United States.
I expect she will flame out, also, unless she grows up and learns to bring something truly worthwhile to the table. Right now, the is little more than a self-aggrandizing commercial enterprise who badly needs to study the issues for a few years.
Well done. Excellent exposé. This comes from someone who was impressed with Edwards’ sincerity. He could fake it, and, in line with George Burns’s maxim, he ALMOST had it made. Perhaps this column can help tear down Palin’s faking.
Without trying to say anything political, I just want to throw my hat in the ring and say I truly dislike her as a candidate for any office. When I see her, I can only think of the fictional Oregon Governor in the movie “Black Sheep” starring Chris Farley and David Spade.