Much has been made in recent days about Gov. Palin and money, specifically how much she’s made since resigning as Governor of Alaska. Here’s a question: what’s wrong with making money? Was she supposed to pay her legal debts with food stamps, animal skins and lottery tickets?
She’s not making money from elected office, she’s not taking money levied onto taxpayers and collected by agents under the threat of force or incarceration, she’s not stealing it and she’s not borrowing it. She’s not grievance-mongering for a victim class or cause, she’s not extorting the money from corporations through threat of boycott and she’s not lobbying for taxpayer money.
She wrote a book, an idea that before its release was mocked and ridiculed and then explained away as inevitable after the fact of its success became obvious. Her book has sold more than two million copies, and it hasn’t even been released in paperback. When she publishes her second book, I doubt it does as well as Going Rogue but it will be an instant best-seller at The New York Times, Amazon and Barnes and Noble before ever hitting the shelves, just as Going Rogue before it.
Her book tour, in hindsight a brilliant idea, was a major risk. If she’d gone around the country on her bus and few people showed up, she would have looked foolish and it would have, for all practical purposes, ended her national rise. Following her own observation on the day of her resignation, she understood that only dead fish go with the flow. Hundreds of thousands of people showed up to those signings and waited in lines that snaked more than a quarter-mile, most of us buying two copies to get autographed and waiting hours to get a few seconds to say “thank you.” Gov. Palin made a lot of money on this. So what? We used to say “good for them” when a person had an idea, took a risk, and succeeded. It’s called The American Way and not The Chicago Way for a reason.
Taking politics to the free market is risky – if you’re a politician, it’s almost unheard of outside the sober speaking tours so many politicians and intellectuals take part in each year. Gov. Palin’s engagements have been so out-of-this-world different than those it boggles the minds of friend and foe alike, in part because it’s so out-of-the-ordinary. Like most supporters of Gov. Palin, I don’t feel exploited or taken advantage of when I hear about her speaking fees – I’d be disappointed if I didn’t have the opportunity to hear her speak at a live venue, frankly, and I certainly don’t expect to hear her for free. I know I’m not alone when I say that I’m quite happy to add my minor contribution to her growing fortune.
Unlike a certain failed Presidential candidate and environmental activist, Gov. Palin is not traveling the globe urging governments to foist upon the unwilling public a series of ghastly environmental regulations that will enrich her. Nope, she’s just charging people who want to see her speak – I was happy to fork over $114 to see her in Tulsa, and if she comes anywhere near me again, I’ll fork it over again. I don’t resent this, I enjoy it. Of the many reasons I work for a living (in the evil free market, mind you) one of them is so I can do things like watch Gov. Palin speak with thousands of her supporters. I earned my money honestly, and I spend it the same way. I don’t begrudge people with different politics the same freedom, I’m happy for them.
Since when did bettering one’s bank account honestly on the free market become a bad thing, or something suspicious? The only thing Gov. Palin is exploiting is the Left’s vitriolic obsession with her, and happily she’s doing a damn fine job at it.
The New York Magazine article “Palin, Inc.” used alterations of American trademarks in an attempt to mock and belittle Gov. Palin. I guess finding the idea that a woman like Gov. Palin able to enrich herself is equal parts sinister, hypocritical and unthinkable in Liberal parlors. Perhaps this ignorance about capitalism and the free market would explain why so many news publications are bleeding money at an unsustainable rate.
The only unintended revelation I took from “Palin, Inc.” was how few people she has working around her. I was taken aback that her “entourage” is so small. When it was revealed that she flies private when coming from Alaska, or flies Business or First Class when in the Lower 48, my only shock was that she doesn’t insist on always flying private. I would, and you would too in the same position. Tidbits like these are presented as though she’s making outrageous rider demands in her speaking contracts, yet I see nothing about demands for “brandy glasses full of brown M&Ms,” I see understandable requests from someone who is mobbed whenever she is in public and treasures her privacy on the rare occasion she gets it.
In “Palin, Inc.,” I was struck by the shocking revelation that the Palins have added two cars to their driveway and are expanding their house to accommodate their daughter and her young child, and their son, a war veteran. I don’t see how this is pernicious or suspect. Isn’t this what families do? Expand their home as they can in order to accommodate their family?
Making money on the free market is not only not evil, it is a supreme good. If it were easy, everyone would do it. Gov. Palin got to the position of being nominated for the GOP ticket by a series of risks that could have ended her political career before it ever got off the ground. Politically and otherwise, she is a risk-taker, and quite a good one at that.
When entitlement becomes the new prosperity, we have reason to worry. That Gov. Palin can make a fortune based on the idea that people want to hear more from her is an idea we need more of, not less. We need more people like Sarah Palin. Younger generations need to understand there are ways of enriching themselves and growing prosperous that don’t involve a hand in the government piggy bank, or control of that bank. Non-profit work is nice if that’s your thing, but it is not more honorable or more moral than offering the public something they want – a product, an idea, an expression – at a profit. Non-profits and government work does not drive the economy, profit does.
Gov. Palin has profited, and good for her. She’s earned it.
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