Reviewing Palin's days as Alaska's governor

Whether that matters a lot circa 2013 is open to question. Palin, born in 1964, is certainly young enough to seek national office again. Whether she will is uncertain. But even if Palin's turn in the political spotlight has ended, the dichotomy she embodied during 2008 is instructive in so many ways that it is difficult to quantify.

During Palin's rise to prominence in Alaska, including her governorship, Matthew Zencey was observing her and writing about her for the Anchorage Daily News. Zencey joined The Philadelphia Inquirer in 2010 (he now works as a freelance editor and writer), but he was not finished writing about Palin. Hence the book Unlikely Liberal.

For seekers of truth, Unlikely Liberal is a powerful book. First, however, a warning about what it is not, straight from Zencey: "You'll have to look elsewhere if you care about Bristol's pregnancy, the feud with Levi, Trig's birth, the state of Palin's marriage to Todd, her career in high school basketball, Piper's progress in school, and other parts of Palin's personal life." Readers unfamiliar with those names probably do not read People magazine carefully.

Zencey's decision to omit almost all references to Palin's personal life is grounded in a somewhat old-fashioned but reasonable journalistic code, as explained by the author: "In my view, a politician's personal life is a public issue only if it reveals hypocrisy on a political question or significantly compromises his or her ability to do the job."