My inaugural comment about Palin's book is that I find it impossible to respect anyone who uses a ghostwriter. If you're smart enough to hold high office, you're smart enough to write your own book. Good writers and mediocre writers alike rely on editors. Only abysmally bad writers can't cobble together a draft to send to their editor without a coauthor holding their hand every step of the way.
Chapter 1,
§ IThe stilted writing hits you from the very start. Palin recounts on page 2 that a constituent at the 2008 Alaska State Fair told her:
"Price of energy's pretty high, Governor. When are they gonna ramp up drilling?"
I don't know how people talk in Alaska, but I honestly doubt that anyone said something substantially like that quote to then-Gov. Palin's face. That's a pretty transparent attempt to insert one of Palin's pet issues into what is ostensibly a biographical section of her book. She's trying to push the idea that, to folks in Alaska, it's just common sense to support drilling for oil. No doubt the breakdown among Alaskans on the issue of domestic oil drilling is different than it is in the rest of the country, but the way Palin drops that in there without comment is pretty self-serving.
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