Sarah Palin accused of being a ‘paranoid’ woman

WASHINGTON - The draft of a memoir - written by Sarah Palin’s once trusted aide, Frank Bailey, and leaked to the media - contains emails that vividly portray her as a ‘paranoid’ woman.

The leaked manuscript contains quotations from emails apparently from the former Alaska governor.

The still-unpublished manuscript, first reported by the Anchorage Daily News and obtained by Politico, reveals Palin, as a candidate for governor, penning letters-to-the-editor in praise of herself, to be sent under other names.

It blames the candidate for inflaming, rather than ignoring, scurrilous rumours. And it quotes her pledging to avoid appearing on any network other than Fox News, referring to the rest as ‘the bad guys’.

A Palin ally, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, confirmed that Bailey had access to Palin’s passwords and email account.

The ally also said that Bailey was embittered because he had been denied promotion, excluded from the 2008 vice-presidential campaign, and been caught up in the ‘Troopergate’ scandal - details Bailey confirms in the proposed book, titled ‘In Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin: A Memoir of our Tumultuous Years’.

Bailey’s 456-page manuscript is in the tradition of juicy political tell-alls by former allies-turned-enemies. Yet despite the intense interest in his subject, Bailey has had difficulty selling it to a publisher.

Bailey, a former Alaska Airlines manager who worked on her 2006 gubernatorial campaign, also shares scores of emails he claims are from Palin that reinforce the worst perceptions of her.

Much of the proposed book’s text focuses on the topic that, he writes, ultimately consumed her governorship - the maintenance of her public image, an obsession with rumours about her family, and her frustration with her portrayal in the media.

By the spring of 2009, just months after she and John McCain had lost the presidential race, Palin is depicted as tired of being criticized and focused more on her own national image than Alaska issues.

“I hate this damn job,” she wrote in an April 28 email to Bailey and another confidante.

In the months before she resigned the governorship, when her poll numbers began to slip, Palin’s advisers sought to bolster her spirits by making the unsubstantiated case that the Obama White House and Democratic National Committee were targeting her.

Palin saves much of her ire for the media.

In June 2009, nearly a year after her disastrous interview with CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric, Palin is portrayed as still holding a grudge toward the broadcaster.

“She SUCKED in ratings before she stumbled upon her little gig mocking me. She did almost lose her job before that VP interview,” wrote Bailey (ANI)