Gov. Sarah Palin is “on a speed date with history,” writes the New York Times‘s Alessandra Stanley today, guessing at the agenda behind Palin’s recent dinner engagements with television anchors (and similar upcoming get-togethers). She’s on a (go ahead, indulge yourself, Stanley) “redemption tour” in which she’s “the headliner and her former running mate is a historical footnote” (and the reporters interviewing her are, I guess, stage hands? Roadies? Groupies?) Palin is sounding, says Stanley, “highly ‘Sarah-centric'” of late (the term Palin herself used “to describe her campaign rallies, arguing that fans were responding to her more as a symbol than as a person.”) Writes Stanley:
Palin could be turning to television to restore her tarnished image, jump-start a 2012 presidential bid, or both. But so far, viewers have mostly witnessed some of the very traits – disarming candor and staggering presumption – that drove some McCain campaign aides to leak damaging accusations about her.
Which isn’t a very “Sarah-centric” way to explain those leaks, given it ignores entirely the possibility that a desire to divert blame for the loss (don’t look at me!) might have been something, too, that “drove some McCain aides to leak damaging accusations about her.”
Liz Cox Barrett is a writer at CJR.