You know, as much as I hate to give Andrew Sullivan any credit. He does point to very good posting here.
This was a bad and unhelpful book.
It was not bad because it was simple. Goldwater (or his ghost) used fewer pages in Conscience of a Conservative and said more. It was not bad because it was autobiographical. Though I don’t like his politics, President Obama confessed more and said it better in Dreams from My Father. If you don’t believe that this book is bad, then read (really do!) Ronald Reagan’s autobiography Where’s the Rest of Me? Ronald Reagan showed more substance in his delightful book written mostly about his time as an actor than Palin shows in her four hundred pages.
Reagan (or his ghost) did not write a wonk book. It is very, very readable, but it wrestles with ideas even in the context of a film star career! It is not Plato, but it is interesting and makes you want to talk to the man who wrote it. There is a man behind the book, the Gipper is in every paragraph, but there is only a ghost of a personality in the corporate machine written Going Rogue.
The best you can say about this book is that it is forgettable and will be forgotten. It is a book-of-the-moment non-book meant to be purchased and given as a Christmas gift to conservatives. It is an utter waste of an opportunity for something better, but it is no worse than most political “memoirs” of its type.
It is better than Pelosi, but damning a person with that comparison is almost too cruel after what Palin has endured.
via Done at Last: Ten Final Thoughts on Palin and “Going Rogue” » Evangel | A First Things Blog.
I hate to say it; but when the Evangelicals are saying your not that bright; it is a good chance that you are most likely not that bright. I like to see reviews like this from the right. I like intellectual honesty. Something that sometimes is not found on the right. I highly recommend this read; and the funny retort by this poster here.
