The Sarah Palin who emerges from the 13,000 or so emails that passed to and from her accounts is a politician struggling to keep on top of the myriad demands made upon her as governor of Alaska and growing increasingly irritated, and at times paranoid, about those she believes to be out to get her.
So much of her daily working life in the governor's mansion in the period 2006 to 2008 covered by the released emails was dedicated to dealing with the warp and weft of government – local, pernickety and decidedly unglamorous. Some of it bore the unmistakable stamp of Alaska, including the email request to her made on 5 March 2008 in which she was asked to take part in a "bear public service announcement" in which she would deliver a message about "reducing bear attractants around the places where Alaskans live and play, keeping bears wild and people safe".
Just five months later Palin would be propelled on to the national and international stage when John McCain chose her to be his vice-presidential running mate, pushing such Alaskan peculiarities into the background.
The year 2008 was an important one for Palin, not just because it was the year in which she became a massive celebrity. It was also a year in which the pressures on her began to crowd in, and the rising tension that she was feeling is palpable in the emails.
It manifested itself largely as irritation against the local media, particularly an Alaskan radio host called Dan Fagan and a former politician and now blogger, Andrew Halcro. Both kept a close eye on Palin's activities in the governor's post, and she clearly regarded both of them as her tormentors. "We're still too nice in response to Halcro," she said in an email in February 2008.
"When are we going to start countering the bs that is out there about our budget?" she wrote the following month, referring to the reporting on the annual financial negotiations by Fagan. "His show is pathetic, the lies he's spewing. This is the first I've heard his show in, forever, and can not believe this is the stuff he believes and is telling Alaskans? Unless we at least factually counter SOME of his lies, Alaskans will believe his rhetoric."
Towards the summer of 2008 Palin had a whole new reason to feel resentment and irritation against her detractors: the so-called "Troopergate" affair was starting to close in on her. An investigation was launched by the Democrat-controlled Alaskan assembly into why she had sacked one of her top team, Walt Monegan, who had been in charge of the law enforcement department.
The allegation made against Palin was that she had broken ethics rules by firing Monegan on the grounds that he had failed to do her bidding in a personal spat that she was having with one of the state troopers. Mike Wooten had been married to Palin's sister until 2006 when they went through a very bitter divorce, and there was allegedly evidence that both Palin and her husband Todd had been campaigning to have Wooten removed from the force.
As the official investigation into Troopergate got under way, Palin showed signs of increasing frustration bordering on paranoia. "I do applogize [sic] if I sound frustrated w this one," she wrote in an email to an adviser on 29 July 2008. "I guess I am. Its [sic] killing me to realise how misinformed leggies [legislators], reporters and others are on this issue. The accusations and false assumptions are mind boggling."
"Do they know that the Wooten divorce was quite a while ago … " she added in a separate email, "despite their insistence every time they report on this that 'she fired Monegan while the trooper was going through a divorce with her sister'? Sheesh, they haven't gotten it right yet. And even their forgetfulness that we offered [Monegan] another job to better utilise his strengths … it's just so frustrating."
The sense of Palin and her inner team feeling under siege against a lying and antagonistic world also infected her relations with Alaskan lawmakers, even those in her own Republican party. During the 2008 budget talks she was in open hostilities with the Republican group in the legislature, accusing them of trying to undermine her efforts to boost the state's economy.
Significantly, Palin, who within a matter of months was to become the darling of the anti-government Tea Party movement after she hit the national political stage, was locked in a bitter battle with local Republicans in which she was on the side of greater public spending and they were attempting to reduce her budget.
In February 2008 she railed against state lawmakers who had cut a provision to pay for legal fees involved in oil and gas development in the state. "I'm back here in DC speaking with Cheney [the vice president] (sat with him the entire State dinner last night), will try to speak w/Bush [the then president] today … speaking with national reporters and all these governors all about AK's [Alaska] proof that we can provide sound oversight of resource development, and here while I'm away I find out the legislature may undermine those efforts? It's unacceptable if the nation is to believe we're capable of responsible, ethical ramped up development that's need in our state, for our nation."
In another email she says that "leggies" [state politicians] "are yanking the rug out from under these efforts, and making my statements sound insincere back here in DC. Public needs to know this is unacceptable."
The impression from the trove of Palin emails of a beleaguered individual who did not take criticism lightly dovetails with the account given by Frank Bailey, one of her closest aides in Alaska, who last month published a memoir of his time with her. "While Sarah Palin's charisma energised followers, her fragile emotional makeup was unnerving. To stay in her good graces, counter-attacking anyone who opposed her became top priority. We went after opponents in coordinated attacks," he writes, adding that he now deeply regrets his role in the operation.
