Palin retakes center stage on book tour

This time, she makes her public entrance as the headliner, not the pretty and vivacious warm-up act that brought bounce and backlash to the 2008 McCain presidential campaign.

As Sarah Palin re-emerges onto the national stage with a new book and a tour to promote it, the polarizing one-time vice presidential candidate gets to sell her story her way. Even the book’s title, “Going Rogue,” suggests that after delivering messages under the careful watch of Republican handlers a year ago, she’s now calling her own shots as she travels the nation to set up what some say is a certain run for the White House in 2012.

Even as some on the left attack her credibility, others say that to dismiss her as a political flash in the pan would be folly. No other veep candidate in recent decades, they say, has generated such ongoing fascination.

“Sarah Palin may be the one rock star that the Republican Party has for the moment,” says Larry Jacobs, the director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota. He cites the intense demand for her at national fundraising events as “a symbol of her potency and potential as a presidential candidate.”

While family foibles have thrust her into the nasty gossipy crosshairs, her embrace by the celebrity magazine set hasn’t been all negative, he says.

“I think Sarah Palin is kind of a boundary-crosser,” Mr. Jacobs says. “She has one hand in the world of politics and the other on the front pages of entertainment and variety magazines. And frankly, it’s worked for her politically. She’s been able to widen her message, and it’s given her visibility that is extraordinary.”

On Monday, Mrs. Palin’s taped interview with talk-show and public-consciousness queen Oprah Winfrey will air, giving viewers a showbiz insight into her current mind-set. In promotional tapes released in advance of the show, Mrs. Palin opens up about her ill-fated interview with Katie Couric — she knew it was bad — and also welcomes prodigal near-son-in-law Levi Johnston to her Thanksgiving table.

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Ms. Winfrey, who supported President Obama during the 2008 election, said in promos for the segment that Mrs. Palin was candid and that no topic was off-limits, even as some detractors wondered if the Alaska hockey mom wasn’t opening herself up to further and rude dissection by taking her talk into Ms. Winfrey’s liberal forum.

Early reviews say it was not “gotcha” TV.

“We talked about Bristol, the pregnancy. We talked about Trig, her baby. We talked about Levi Johnston. We talked about her marriage. We talked about everything; there’s nothing that we didn’t talk about,” Ms. Winfrey said in a clip posted on YouTube earlier this week.

“Lots of people didn’t want me to have her on, lots of people did. Lots of her supporters didn’t think that she should come here, but she did,” the chat-show diva said by way of endorsing Mrs. Palin’s openness.

Just as the Oprah appearance kick-starts her book tour, which officially opens in Grand Rapids, Mich., on Tuesday, Mrs. Palin faces continued backlash from Mr. Johnston, who recently said he will seek joint custody of his child with Bristol and who is making money on his own entertainment appearances — including posing nude for Playgirl. Mr. Johnston has told TV entertainment tabloids that he is taking showbiz gigs — he wants a career in acting — as a way to provide for his infant son and show that he is a responsible parent.

But a Playgirl spokesman told Politico earlier this week that the pictorial was Mr. Johnston’s way of getting back at the Palins for what he says is the family’s poor treatment of him.

Not that the baby-daddy woes should matter, some supporters say.

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