As promised last night, today we present Part II of C4P reader Keith Pickett's guest submission on the one-year anniversary of Governor Palin's resignation as Governor of Alsaka.
Written by Keith Pickett (aka wilsonpickett)
Part II
Having spent a lot of years around college basketball recruiters and NBA scouts, this writer/editor has observed there are a couple of special attributes – “upside” and “effortlessness” – that those basketball professionals look for at tryout camps and exhibition workouts. Only a few athletes possess that rare combination.
Time and again, Governor Sarah Palin has demonstrated both qualities in the fields of politics and leadership, which is why -- as prolific C4P analyst “techno” often writes -- she has become a superstar.
Let me explain:
1) "Upside" is important because it means the player (or candidate), although good right now, has the capacity to grow or get stronger and to develop or hone already existing skills. You don't want to recruit someone who has already reached his or her peak. Remember what the veteran campaign vetter, former Reagan White House legal counsel Arthur Culvahouse, said in his law firm's conclusion about Governor Palin in 2008. Even though she perhaps wasn't ready at that moment to become Vice President (few candidates are, he said), she "had the capacity" to become an outstanding VP.
Sure enough, Sarah Palin’s unconventional tactical decision to buck the odds and step away from the Alaska governor’s post enabled her to display her capacity for influential leadership during the past year in a variety of areas – book sales, endorsing political candidates, commenting as an analyst on network television, affecting the national debate on controversial issues. She successfully side-stepped the adversaries who were trying to restrict her movements and to personally bankrupt her and husband Todd. Who could have predicted such developments a year and a half ago?
2) The “appearance of effortlessness" is what the really talented players, the superstars, have. It is what distinguishes them from the normal, good players. One longtime friend who has spent years watching tryout camps said he always looks for the athlete who appears as if he doesn’t have to work as hard physically, yet accomplishes just as much or more as the others.......and does it with smoothness, grace and style. It means when he is surrounded by talented players of similar ilk, he can rise to the occasion and use another gear to soar past the competition. It is what enables those athletes to become superstars. In professional basketball, Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird and now Kobe Bryant and the young LeBron James possess those qualities.
Look at Governor Palin's activities the past year (since the beginning of July 2009). She announced her resignation as state governor, causing the "experts" to say she was finished as a player on the national scene, that she had committed political suicide.
Then she proceeded to accelerate the writing of what turned out to be her national-best-selling book "Going Rogue," while at the same time causing the Congress to delay tackling a potentially damaging "cap and trade" bill with a highly read July 14 Washington Post op-ed (the No. 3 most-read editorial on the newspaper’s Web site for the entire year of 2009) and then stalling the Obama healthcare train with those two mighty words -- "death panels" -- on her Facebook page August 7.
Before long the multi-faceted, cultural avalanche gathered steam:
• Hugely successful, untraditional book tour in the heartland (resembling a series of campaign stops but avoiding most major cities), accompanied by extensive national media coverage including special interviews with Barbara Walters and Oprah Winfrey; achievement of being No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller book list for six consecutive weeks, with hard-cover book sales reaching almost 2.7 million in the first six weeks alone (November 17 to December 31, 2009);
• Overnight dinner-guest visit with the legendary Billy Graham and his family at their farm in North Carolina;
• Surprise appearance and humorous putdown of William Shatner on the “Conan
O'Brien Show";
• “Effortless” stand-up comedy routine on the “Jay Leno Show”;
• Keynote speeches (she has turned down over 1,000 speaking requests) before a wide variety of audiences and organizations across America, including the first Tea Party national meeting and the Southern Leadership Republican Conference; appearances sometimes earned her fees of up to $75,000 or $100,000;
• Status as a “FOX News contributor” on different top-rated network news programs from a TV studio built in her home in Alaska;
• Announcement of her hosting an Alaskan documentary TV series (currently being filmed) on the TLC network and plans to write another book to be published later in 2010;
• Growth of SarahPAC, compiling funds of approximately $1 million at the end of the second quarter 2010 with few concentrated major fund-raising efforts;
• Endorsing “Mama Grizzlies” and other Conservative political candidates across the country, sometimes with personal appearances, showing leadership as the 2010 mid-term elections approach and accelerating – even rocketing – the status of those candidates in primaries or general-election races;
• Production of a first-rate “Mama Grizzlies” video, campaign-like but different, unveiled to wide critical acclaim from friends and foes alike;
• Writing effective, educational, sometimes policy-oriented Facebook posts which have a rapidly-growing following of almost two million people (that milestone may be surpassed this week);
• Composing creative, pithy tweets on Twitter, now with over 200,000 online followers (impressive total considering that she had to abandon her earlier list of 150,000 because the State of Alaska said it owned the first Twitter account);
• Gaining recent momentum in political polls as one of the top two or three favorite GOP candidates for President in 2012 (No. 1 in some of those polls);
• Adding a new word to the lexicon: “refudiate”;
• Etc., etc., etc.
Governor Palin has done all this in the past 12 months while raising a family of five (including a Down Syndrome baby) with her husband, living hours from the Lower 48 and constantly fighting off attacks on her family, her feminism, her words, her accomplishments and her very existence.
At this time, we don’t know whether or not Sarah Palin will actually run for President of the United States. Whatever happens, it is interesting to watch her perform in a seemingly effortless manner, always with a smile on her face. Her political instincts and her ability to connect with people are special. She hasn’t needed a title “to make a difference.”
That is why she is a superstar!
