Editor’s note: “lamestream” is a Sarah Palin direct quote and we elected not to use “sic” in the first paragraph.

By Brian Howey

ELKHART – I watched Sarah on Oprah the other day. The ex-governor of Alaska didn’t come off as bad as I thought she would, me being one of those “lamestream media” types.

Actually, I found Gov. Sarah Palin before most Americans did. When there was rampant speculation on whether Barack Obama would put Hillary Clinton on the Democratic ticket, I wondered: Is there a Republican woman ready for a national ticket?

Sadly, the names within the Big Tent Grand Old Party were sparse on the gender front. But I remembered Gov. Palin; went to the State of Alaska website and found the Palin family. I liked what I saw: First Dude Todd Palin and a reformer governor who beat the calcified establishment.

After watching Sarah on Oprah, I began to see all sorts of grays emerge for this Palin story. It has a Dan Quayle tinge to it. An obscure but talented politician is plucked out of the masses and immediately put on the Big Stage with the glare of the klieg lamps and a tormented, craving news media, irritated that they didn’t get the scoop. The campaign handlers lose their grip and the nominee twists and twirls in the gale.

Sarah Palin

There were all those adoring fans, like the 24,000 Hoosiers who showed up during rush hour at Verizon Music Center, or the Hoosier Republican delegate who quickly anointed Sarah “one hot chick” at the national convention.

That was not what the Lugar Series on Public Excellence had in mind. If the Republican Party wants to regain enduring power, it needs to not only expand the Big Tent into regions of America (like New England) but also into demographics. It needs more women in statehouses and Congress. I don’t believe Hoosiers have ever sent a female Republican to Congress,with the exception of  U.S. Rep. Cecil M. Harden who served in western Indiana from 1949 to 1959. The Republicans need to take note of the Indiana Senate, where some half dozen female senators have ascended into leadership.

What we’re seeing unfold with Palin book signings in places like Fort Wayne and Noblesville is a Republican love affair with the ceiling shatterer. I can see why. When she talks of learning her child Trig had that “extra chromosome” as she told Oprah, she asked, “Why us?” Todd replied, “Why not us?” As the step-dad to a lovely autistic 9-year-old, the sequence hit a deeper spot within me than the torrent of Palin fan lust and media feeding frenzy.

She talked about her grandson’s father – Levi – who had just finished his photo shoot with Playgirl Magazine in New York. This is the full thrust of the Palin tabloid glare. But Sarah Palin left the family door open for teenage Baby-Daddy Levi (or is it Ricky Hollywood?), even if Oprah had to coax her into inviting him over for Thanksgiving dinner.

She talked about the infamous Katie Couric interviews. It was those disastrous sessions (along with the infamous turkey decapitation presser after the election) that caused great concern with me over someone so green being a heartbeat away from a presidency that would have to deal with two vicious wars, the Wall Street meltdown, the auto industry collapse, and all the lost jobs.

The ex-governor was saying things the McCain campaign handlers cringed at because she was out of the loop. According to Palin, the worst moments of her Couric interviews got stitched together in several 2-minute packages on the CBS Evening News.

Brian Howey

This has that Jim Baker handling Dan Quayle Greek tragedy written all over it. The McCain campaign had wrapped up the nomination essentially in February 2008 and then it wasted time, money and ultimately the vice presidential nomination luster. And it wasn’t Sarah Palin’s fault. She simply got swept up in the whirlwind.

Now her book, “Going Rogue,” has hit the stands. It seems to be more intent on settling scores. Many Republicans wished she had spent more time studying policy. But it will be No. 1 on the New York Times bestseller list. Why didn’t Sarah just tell Katie that she reads Newsweek, the Weekly Standard, Rolling Stone and the New York Times?

Last Thursday, Hoosiers lined up to see the ex-governor by the thousands as she began her million-dollar book tour. There will be much speculation on a presidential run, even after her participation in the New York 23 debacle that actually gave the Democrats a critical House vote on health care reform vote.

She is a political celebrity. She is not yet presidential material.

As for Sarah and me, I still can’t erase the great unease that she came perhaps one quote (”the fundamentals of the American economy are sound”) away from the heartbeat away. But after watching Oprah, I found a real, compassionate woman. I hope the Republican Party brings us even more.

The columnist publishes at www.howeypolitics.com

The Howey Report

By Brian Howey

NORTH WEBSTER – It was about a year ago with rampant speculation on an Obama-Clinton ticket that I started scouting the Internet for the Republican “Hillary.”

There were the obvious ones: Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Christine Todd Whitman, and Condi Rice, and … not many others. This is the party of white, middle-aged men; where only 35 national convention delegates were African-American; where alienating the Latino vote in 2006 became a GOP blood sport (memo to John Hostettler and Chris Chocola: Latinos reproduce and vote much more profusely than gays).

Brian Howey

I had heard about the governor from Alaska and checked out the state website. There I found Gov. Sarah Palin and First Dude Todd. Very attractive woman. Nice looking family. She seemed like a progressive, having run against entrenched Republicans on a reform movement that brought her to power in a stunning upset. There she was: John McCain’s running mate. The first female Republican ascending to the ticket.

The story line was this: Obama had passed on gender for talkative Joe Biden. McCain had wanted to make a different kind of history and bring estranged Democrat Joe Lieberman on to the ticket. But social Republicans were promising a floor revolt, so McCain chose Palin.

It was a gutsy move, I thought. Palin’s unveiling was promising. She had the looks, spunk, and gumption. Here was a success story from one of America’s last frontiers.

And then came September.

This was the month of disaster. For America, it was the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the Wall Street meltdown. We began getting the first indicators that the “Detroit 3″ was on the brink. People began throwing the “trillions” number around and there was talk of the “D-word.” It began dawning on people that American was headed for a potential economic catastrophe.

It was at this moment that Palin stumbled. Her network interviews with Katie Couric and Charlie Gibson were disasters. She had trouble with the simplest questions. These anchors weren’t playing “gotcha.” They were playing “getting to know you.” And Sarah Palin flunked. She flunked as she stood with the oldest presidential nominee in history, with actuaries noting that there was a 20 percent chance he wouldn’t live to finish a first term.

Sarah Palin on the left; Tina Fey on the right.

This crystallized on NBC’s Saturday Night Live when Tina Fey didn’t even have to make up satire: she used Palin’s answers verbatim. Americans laughed and howled and winced.

By the time Sarah Palin came to Indiana in October, she was the darling of the social conservatives who already hated and distrusted the news media. Palin didn’t have to convince them. She didn’t have to act or sound smart. She just had to play the victim card. Nearly 20,000 people endured a rush hour traffic jam to see her at Verizon Music Center at Noblesville. A similar amount showed up at Jeffersonville a few weeks later.

During this time, there were telltale signs from the Hoosier Republican establishment that Palin was a problem. There were no congratulatory press releases from Sen. Dick Lugar or any of the Hoosier congressmen or Gov. Mitch Daniels, an early supporter of McCain. Daniels was “too busy” to appear with her at Verizon. At her second Indiana event, Gov. Daniels showed up in the parking lot to greet supporters, but didn’t appear with Gov. Palin.

After the election, many of us thought she’d go back to Alaska, study up, and lead. She could finish out her term, set up a presidential campaign, move down to the lower 48 and set up a campaign HQ in Boise, and, perhaps, she could polish herself up to pass as a credible candidate.

Instead, Palin and her family became tabloid fodder. She did a press interview “pardoning” a Thanksgiving Turkey as turkey heads were being lopped off in the background (nice staff work there). She had a disastrous session with the Alaska General Assembly, which for the first time in history refused to seat a cabinet nominee.

Still, Sarah Palin was hot property. When she appeared at a Right to Life dinner in Evansville last April, thousands of Hoosiers showed up to see her, to listen to her. And here she talked passionately about her son that she discovered would be born with Down Syndrome. “That blew me away, it rocked my world… It was a time I asked myself, was I going to walk the walk?” she asked.

Therein lies Palin’s power with the social conservatives. She knows how to touch them. When Palin finished speaking, many Hoosiers rushed to her and told her to run for president.

Last Friday, Gov. Palin quit. “As I thought about this announcement that I would not seek reelection, I thought about how much fun other governors have as lame ducks: They maybe travel around their state, travel to other states, maybe take their overseas international trade missions,” Palin said in yet another rambling speech. “I’m not going to put Alaskans through that. I’m not wired to operate under the same old politics as usual.”
Instead, she talked of a “higher calling” and did nothing to tamp down talk that a 2012 presidential run was coming.

As for Sarah Palin abruptly quitting and her higher calling? My friend Rick Wilkerson noted on his Facebook page that she might have resigned to assume the vacated throne of the King of Pop.

The columnist publishes at www.howeypolitics.com.