The former Alaska governor Sarah Palin revealed a hitherto hidden capacity for self-parody when she delivered a string of quips at a dinner for journalists in Washington on Saturday, likening the event to appearing before a “death panel”.
Palin, who became a deeply divisive figure in the United States while campaigning as John McCain’s vice-presidential running mate, joked to a gathering of the Gridiron Club about her reputation for foreign policy naivety.
“I came down from my hotel room and I could see the Russian embassy,” she said — a play on a much-mocked election attempt to shore up her foreign policy expertise by remarking that Russia was visible from parts of Alaska.
Palin, a self-proclaimed political maverick, has claimed in her best-selling book, Going Rogue, that McCain’s campaign staff undermined her.
In a tongue-in-cheek reference, she told diners: “The view is so much better inside the bus than under the bus.”
If the election had delivered a different result, she said Barack Obama’s balding vice-president, Joe Biden, could be in her shoes: “I could be the one overseeing the signing of bail-out cheques and vice-president Biden could be on the road selling his book Going Rogaine.”
In an unlikely meeting of minds, Palin was one of two keynote speakers at the dinner alongside congressman Barney Frank, an openly gay, left-leaning Democrat from Massachusetts.
She played up the discomfort of mingling with Washington opinion-leaders, comparing it to appearing before the type of “death panel” she recently claimed would determine the fate of ailing patients under White House healthcare reform proposals.
Palin also gave the media a sense of what she felt the index to her book ought to look like.
“A: Alaska, media not understanding it, page 1 to 432,” she said. “B: biased, page 1 to 432.” – guardian.co.uk