Palin's First Campaign Manager

Not a fan:

“She’s nothing like us!” she stammered, “she doesn’t know what it’s like to not be able to pay the bills, to not be able to get credit cards or health insurance for the kids. Not everyone has what they have; that image is a lie. And it’s not that she’s like us. We’d like to believe that. People are living vicariously through her. They feel they’re missing something in life. But she has that way where she can impact someone in that manner; its like you feel you’re living that life, and that’s why she can say ‘Oh, I’m just one of them,’ because we’re desperately trying to live vicariously through her energetic and determined lifestyle. Maybe that’s why I’m so damned proud of her – I’m doing it too.” ...

State Senate President Lyda Green told me she knows full well the “Troopergate” allegations were substantial, because she knew the trooper in question, Mike Wooten. When he told her details from his confidential personnel file were being used against him by the lawyer for his ex-wife, Palin’s sister, Green says she contacted a friend at the appropriate state agency. “I made inquiries,” she said, “and the guy who I talked to happens to be a friend, and he said, yeah, we’re having a little problem with that.’”

But that inquiry has been stalled by a Republican lawsuit and Palin has begun to take on a Teflon sheen to which nothing can stick. Before I left Alaska, I learnt that the local papers had indeed reported on the substance of McLeod’s allegations against Palin – that she committed the same offences for which she persecuted Randy Ruedrich – but Palin waved them away with a brief response: “For any mistakes like that, that were made, I apologise.”