Since Senator John McCain named her as the Republican nominee for Vice-President in August 2008, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has become one of the most polarizing figures in America. The most recent poll shows her disapproval rating at 63% and her favorable rating at 30%. What those polls don’t show is the fervor with which many of those 30% love Palin. Though she’s been a private citizen for almost two years, her every move continues to make national headlines and, in spite of that huge disapproval rating, she’s likely to be a major force in the 2012 elections whether or not she runs.
Like many in the 63%, I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out the nature of Palin’s appeal. As I watched the local news reports of her “One Nation” bus tour pulling in to see the Liberty Bell, I figured it out: Sarah Palin is a hero and she’s on Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey.
Joseph Campbell outlined the Hero’s Journey as the archetypal story in which a hero leaves the comforts of home for a strange and distant land, discovers him or herself through various trials, loves and the overcoming personal demons; wins a prize; returns home with boons for society; and in most cases, rules that society. It’s the underlying story of Gilgamesh, Odysseus, King David, Arthur, Jesus, Luke Skywalker, Frodo, Neo and Harry Potter.
The Hero’s Journey allows a mundane audience (us) to sympathize with these larger-than-life characters who often end up with all the money, power and toys. It’s harder to hate the people with all the toys if you’ve seen where they come from, what they’ve been through, and why they may deserve the good stuff. This is why it’s harder to hate Bill Gates, who dropped out of college and built Microsoft out of a garage than, say, these people.
Below, we’ll look at Palin’s unfinished progress through the Hero’s Journey, as she walks between the two worlds of entertainment and politics. The italicized summaries of the steps of the journey come from here.
Stage One: The Departure
The Call to Adventure
The call to adventure is the point in a person’s life when they are first given notice that everything is going to change, whether they know it or not.
Destined for something special. Or braces.
In 1982, Sarah Heath led her high school basketball to an Alaska State Championship and her competitiveness earned her the nickname “Sarah Barracuda.” If your friends give you that kind of nickname, you’re destined for something special.
Refusal of the Call
Often when the call is given, the future hero refuses to heed it. This may be from a sense of duty or obligation, fear, insecurity, a sense of inadequacy, or any of a range of reasons that work to hold the person in his or her current circumstances.
Heavy is the head that wears the tiny, tiny crown.
After winning the Miss Wasilla contest in 1984, Heath placed 3rd in the Miss Alaska pageant. Over the next few years she attended five different colleges in three states, seemingly unwilling to move forward with her career. She finally graduated in 1987 and had a brief career as a local sportscaster.
Meeting the Mentor/Supernatural Aid
Once the hero has committed to the quest, consciously or unconsciously, his or her guide and magical helper appears, or becomes known.
In 1988, Sarah Heath eloped with Todd Palin and worked with him in commercial fishing. Though he’s been both a hindrance and a help to her future career, it seems that they are a close pair that works well together. His outdoorsy, snowmobiling nature became a crucial part of her political persona. Presumably, he also taught her to snowmobile.
The Crossing of the First Threshold
This is the point where the person actually crosses into the field of adventure, leaving the known limits of his or her world and venturing into an unknown and dangerous realm where the rules and limits are not known.
In 1992, Palin won her first election to City Council in Wasilla. She gets a total of 413 votes. She won reelection, then defeated incumbent mayor John Stein in 1996. As mayor, she fired both the local Museum director and the police chief. This was her first test of power over others and she starts to push the limits. Overreaching and firing people became something of a theme. Palin served two terms as mayor, leaving the office in 2002.
The Supernatural/Mentor Figure. There is a bit of pixie around the eyes.
The Belly of the Whale
The belly of the whale represents the final separation from the hero’s known world and self. It is sometimes described as the person’s lowest point, but it is actually the point when the person is between or transitioning between worlds and selves. By entering this stage, the person shows their willingness to undergo a metamorphosis, to die to him or herself.
After losing a bid for Lt. Governor in 2002, Palin beat incumbent Governor Frank Murkowski in the Republican primary and was subsequently elected the youngest and the first female Governor of Alaska in 2006. She may still sleep there at night (and get government travel stipends for doing so), but in a less literal sense, Sarah Palin’s not in Wasilla anymore.
As Governor, Palin entered the national political scene and her worldview shifts significantly. Despite the view of Russia from her house, Palin had never before left the country. In 2006, she got a passport and visits US troops in Kuwait and Germany.
Domestically, Palin began to get attention from national political interests as she made a name for herself in the larger debates about drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and about the infamous “Bridge to Nowhere.”
On the darker side, Palin fired Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan in July, 2008. Monegan then claimed that Palin and her husband had pressured him to fire State Trooper Mike Wooten. Wooten was also Palin’s ex-brother-in-law, and he and her sister were engaged in a custody fight. It’s like a scene from Cops, except the drunk sister screaming at everybody also happens to be the boss of the responding officers.
Click through to Stage Two: The Initiation
Stage Two: The Initiation
The Road of Trials
The road of trials is a series of tests, tasks, or ordeals that the person must undergo to begin the transformation. Often the person fails one or more of these tests, which often occur in threes.
Sarah Palin met John McCain in Arizona on August 27, 2008 and two days later, he announced her as his running mate. It was there that her trials began.
On August 1, the Alaska legislature began a formal investigation of the Monegan firing. The resulting “troopergate” scandal dogged her throughout the 2008 campaign, most especially after the independent investigator’s report claimed that Palin had violated the state’s Executive Branch Ethics Act when she used her office to advance a personal agenda.
Her second trial came just two days after the announcement, when Palin was forced to publicly admit that her 18-year old daughter, Bristol, was pregnant out of wedlock. Palin was largely chosen because of her perceived appeal to conservative Christian Republican base and this could have been devastating. Her handling of the situation was extremely well-done, however, and the situation did not seem to do much damage to the campaign.
If Katie Couric ever asks you what you read, please take the opportunity to plug overthinkingit.com
Palin’s third trial was her relationship with the media, exemplified in her late-September interviews with Katie Couric. Palin had expected those interviews to be easy, but her poor handling of them led to serious doubts about her ability to take over the presidency. In mid-September, before the interviews, her polling was largely positive. After two weeks of media attention on her “I can see Russia from my house” foreign policy answer and the blank stare she gave Couric when asked what newspapers she read, Palin’s polling dropped significantly. By October 10, the New York Times was reporting that she was dragging down the ticket.
The Meeting with the Goddess:
The meeting with the goddess represents the point in the adventure when the person experiences a love that has the power and significance of the all-powerful, all encompassing, unconditional love that a fortunate infant may experience with his or her mother. Although Campbell symbolizes this step as a meeting with a goddess, unconditional love and /or self unification does not have to be represented by a woman.
This is pure conjecture, but I think that the all-powerful love that Palin found during the 2008 campaign was fame. To a greater degree than even the other national candidates, she seemed to thrive on the adulation of the then-nascent Tea Party and to genuinely enjoy chanting “Drill Baby, Drill” with thousands of true believers. Her actions since the end of the campaign have often been confusing and her motives have been unclear, but in every case, those actions have served to put her in front of the biggest possible audience.
Woman as the Temptress
At one level, this step is about those temptations that may lead the hero to abandon or stray from his or her quest, which as with the Meeting with the Goddess does not necessarily have to be represented by a woman.
Tina Fey’s portrayal of Palin on Saturday Night Live held up an interesting mirror for Palin and may have shaped her subsequent actions. The uncanny likeness between the two and Fey’s spot-on impression garnered nearly as much attention as Palin herself. When she made an appearance on SNL, Palin got a Wonderful Life look at the way things might have been. Palin had started out in TV and here was a woman who had made TV work. Fey had all the fame that Palin wanted, but without having to engage in the exhausting tasks of campaigning and governing. Fey’s success and popularity must have looked awfully good to Palin, who had spent the last two months being picked apart by pundits from across the world. Palin was in no way tempted to abandon politics by Lisa Ann’s portrayal in Larry Flynt’s “Who’s Nailin’ Palin?”
The Woman as Temptress: Please blame Joseph Campbell for calling it that.
Atonement with the Father
In this step the person must confront and be initiated by whatever holds the ultimate power in his or her life. For the transformation to take place, the person as he or she has been must be “killed” so that the new self can come into being.
In America, on paper, the people are the ultimate power and on November 4, 2008, Palin faced them. She got killed. Still, only about 200 people in our history have had their name on a nationwide ballot, so that’s pretty cool. Though she lost, Palin was ready to crawl out of the grave, possibly using John McCain as a grisly step-stool to resurrection.
Apotheosis
To apotheosize is to deify. When someone dies a physical death, or dies to the self to live in spirit, he or she moves beyond the pairs of opposites to a state of divine knowledge, love, compassion and bliss. A more mundane way of looking at this step is that it is a period of rest, peace and fulfillment before the hero begins the return.
No longer forced to hang out with her paired opposite, John McCain, Palin was at the top of every list of 2012 Republican Presidential candidates even before all the 2008 votes were counted. Without the constant hassles of running for office and talking to reporters, Palin was able to rest up while her popularity began to soar.
The Ultimate Boon
The ultimate boon is the achievement of the goal of the quest. It is what the person went on the journey to get. All the previous steps serve to prepare and purify the person for this step, since in many myths the boon is something transcendent like the elixir of life itself, or a plant that supplies immortality, or the holy grail.
I’m tempted to say that the ultimate boon was the $150,000 that the Republican Party spent on clothes and makeup for Palin and her family in a single month. What a wardrobe! The holy grail for Palin, though, was popularity. Like the Miss Alaska pageant, she only got an honorable mention in the actual contest, but she came through it with a rock-solid personal brand, a rabid fan base, and seemingly perpetual interest from the media. Only President Obama got more out of the 2008 election, but if the economy continues to tarnish his crown like topless photos of Vanessa Williams, Palin may be able to pick up the sash.
Click through for Stage Three: The Return
Stage Three: The Return
Refusal of the Return
So why, when all has been achieved, the ambrosia has been drunk, and we have conversed with the gods, why come back to normal life with all its cares and woes?
In July, 2009, Palin resigned from her position as Governor of Alaska, “passing the ball for victory.” She had served in government since 1992, but after the glitz of a presidential campaign, Juneau apparently lacked appeal. She claimed both that she had accomplished most of her goals and that a number of ethics investigations prevented her from accomplishing anything else in that position. Nobody believed her and pretty much everyone thought she was either crazy or that she was already planning to run for president and figured that the longer she was governor the more likely it was that she’d screw up. Another GOP presidential hopeful, NJ Governor Chris Christie should have learned this lesson and resigned after his first week in office.
The thing about all the art on the Palin tour bus? Hides the fact that the inside is full of black lights and trippy Grateful Dead posters.
The Magic Flight
Sometimes the hero must escape with the boon, if it is something that the gods have been jealously guarding. It can be just as adventurous and dangerous returning from the journey as it was to go on it.
Fleeing from government service, Palin was in serious danger of losing her place in the limelight. She needed to stay in the public eye to maintain the strength of her brand. Her Magic Flight began in November 2009 on an 11 state bus tour to promote her book, Going Rogue. The book sold more than a million copies, so the bus tour not only preserved her political capital, it gave her some real capital to play with as well.
Palin’s second Magic Flight aired on TLC as Sarah Palin’s Alaska from November 2010 to January 2011. The show was essentially a slideshow of a Palin family vacation, but did manage to garner 3.2 million viewers per episode. Getting 1% of America to watch your home movies should count as a success, even if the show wasn’t renewed.
A less successful effort was Palin’s participation in the 2010 elections. Her SarahPAC organization raised a lot of money, but Palin’s support was often a mixed bag – helping win Republican primaries, but hurting candidates in general elections. Republicans blame her for losing the Delaware Senate race in particular. Palin’s support helped the extremely right-wing Christine O’Donnell beat centrist Mike Castle in the primary. O’Donnell went on to lose that race, a race that Castle would likely have won.
Rescue from Without
Just as the hero may need guides and assistants to set out on the quest, often times he or she must have powerful guides and rescuers to bring them back to everyday life, especially if the person has been wounded or weakened by the experience.
A million books and 3 million viewers was good for Palin, but her best exposure in 2010 came from her daughter Bristol. Bristol’s fall 2010 run on Dancing With the Stars put Palin in front of 20 million viewers, and put her in the very sympathetic role of a mother being there to support her daughter. Say what you want about Palin politically, but the tears of worry and pride in her eyes as her daughter danced made it hard to think anything negative about her in that moment. Fortunately, she did not dance. Politicians should not dance.
The Crossing of the Return Threshold
The trick in returning is to retain the wisdom gained on the quest, to integrate that wisdom into a human life, and then maybe figure out how to share the wisdom with the rest of the world. This is usually extremely difficult.
Which brings us to today. As I’m writing this, Palin’s “One Nation” bus tour is traveling the northeast and hitting all of our nation’s most overtly patriotic tourist attractions (including Donald Trump) on its way. The press is going absolutely crazy over the tour and Palin’s refusal to commit, though in a June 5 interview with Fox news, she did drop the phrase “President Palin” before saying of President Obama’s economic policies:
“it’s not working and we do need to shift gears and change course. And it’s very noble of President Obama to want to stay at the helm and maybe go down with this sinking ship. But I prefer, many Americans prefer, that we start plugging the hole, that we start powering the bilge pump and start getting rid of this unsustainable debt that is sinking our ship. We don’t have to go the way of the Titanic and there are things that have to be put in place right now before this ship does sink. We don’t have to keep going down the road that we’re going on today.”
In or not, Palin’s clearly playing footsie with the threshold of a return to electoral politics and enjoying the hell out of all the attention. Whatever she decides, we can count on the fact that in the interim, she’ll be taking shots at Obama and sharing her wisdom with the world four sea/land transportation-based metaphors at a time. (Note: throughout her journey, a shaky relationship with metaphor has been this Mama Grizzlie’s cross to bear: see also crosshairs/full court press.)
Master of the Two Worlds
In myth, this step is usually represented by a transcendental hero like Jesus or Buddha. For a human hero, it may mean achieving a balance between the material and spiritual. The person has become comfortable and competent in both the inner and outer worlds.
While ascribing Jesus or Buddha status to Palin may be going a bit far, she is walking in the two worlds of entertainment and politics more seamlessly than any candidate we’ve seen before. Trump’s brief flirtation with running for President was in a similar mold, but Palin’s been doing it longer and, incredible as it may seem, has more credibility. Like her or hate her, she’s embodying a new kind of politics and may be our first look at the next stage of American democracy.
If only more wolves had seen Indiana Jones and Last Crusade.
Freedom to Live
Mastery leads to freedom from the fear of death, which in turn is the freedom to live. This is sometimes referred to as living in the moment, neither anticipating the future nor regretting the past.
“Neither anticipating the future nor regretting the past” summarizes both the basic moral tenet of reality TV and the unstated campaign slogan of Palin 2012. If Palin stays in both the political and entertainment games, freedom to live may mean the freedom to put cameras in every room of the White House. Everyone ready to watch Sarah Palin’s Jersey Shore?
Conclusion
Gilgamesh and Odysseus were unsympathetic pricks. Luke and Neo were both whined too much. Sarah Palin likes to shoot wolves from planes. But like these characters or not, their journeys are certainly compelling. She’s only two steps from the end of the hero’s journey, but we’ll have to wait and see if our heroine can kick start her campaign, keep the pedal to the metal, tie her supporters to the pier, get independent voters to get on the Palin-train, and return her public standing to its upright and locked position.
Governor Palin, America’s holding out for a hero. You’ve gotta be sure. It’s gotta be soon. You’re already larger than life.