Do I think there was a moment where Sarah Palin felt overwhelmed? Absolutely. But I believe her frustration was that the McCain camp had a defined, "cookie cutter" role for her as the VP nominee and quite frankly, she didn't fit that cookie cutter. She "rebelled" and went out to be herself.
The film chose to spin her bad interviews and such by implying that it was 1) a lack of intelligence, 2) a lack of preparation, and 3) some sort of grandiose sense of invincibility.
Now back to history. Palin was a surprise pick, who wanted to do her best for McCain. I think she tried to force herself into McCain's cookie cutter, but couldn't do it in the end. The pressure was overwhelming. And with that, she stepped out to be her own person.
The film tried to spin that as egomania. I don't think there was any egotism at all on display here. I believe Sarah Palin couldn't compromise who she is to fit McCain's VP mold.
To me, that represents solid core values and character! The film always looks at the glass as half-empty, but I think a conservative could watch the film and find it half-full. They tried to spin it into a real hit-piece (particularly the ending), but in the end, I found myself liking Sarah Palin MORE for certain events in the film.
Charlie Rose interviewed the book's authors (Halperin & Heilemann, both of whom have been much in demand on the talking-head shows in the last week), and in the chat passed around his table, as at Gwen Ifill's Washington Week table on Friday night, the comments about Sarah Palin were much less censoriouse, and indeed I thought I heard, from Ifill and others, some murmurs of compassion and understanding for Sarah, together with a universal understanding and acceptance of her rock-star charisma, which flows precisely from her character.
Which puts me in mind of a famous dressing-down that Whittier once addressed to Edgar Allan Poe, for having criticized Longfellow as a somehow inadequate poet, at the end of which Whittier came down to the "granite" of character, which he judged in Longfellow's case to be proof against Poe's stylistic complaints about Longfellow's form in composition.
Late-nite Sunday and overnight Monday-morning news on ABC News showed a quick reaction interview with a Democrat consultant named Lehane, who looks, acts, and reviewed Sarah as portrayed in the film, as if he were a rabid mongoose. He literally looks like one.
But some of the ABC personnel's comments were, again, less censorious and "slammy" than I expected, and there was an undertow of actual sympathy for Sarah. I was puzzled by that and wondered if there is some new, more insidious paradigm of Sarah-condemnation at work in Mouse House, but we'll have to await events. I wonder if Rush noticed it.