Sarah Palin bus tour: Todd Palin's perspective on 2012 election

By Shushannah Walshe

Newsweek/DailyBeast

The "First Dude" says he’s not pushing her to run. Todd Palin chatted with reporters at a coffee shop in Pennsylvania after touring the Gettysburg battlefields. It is day three of the Palin Bus Tour, which is stopping at historical sites up the East Coast. “It’s up to her what she decides to do. I am not pushing her either way. It’s her decision,” Palin told a small group of reporters after his wife met with customers at the coffee shop. “There are pros and cons of course. But this country, we have to get back on the right track.”

At Express Coffee in Dillsburg, he also denied that the bus tour is a “test run” for his family saying his children have grown up with their mother in the spotlight.

“This family has been tested. When people talk about how she was just plucked up out of Wasilla, you have to look at her career. Every step in her career is another step for the family, and we were prepared. These kids grew up around the mayor of a small town. Local politics is in your face every day, it’s not like you get on a plane and fly to D.C. or Juneau.”

When asked if the Palins would consider bringing press aboard their “One Nation” tour bus much like John McCain did in 2008 he said, “It’s a different scenario” because his wife “is employed by Fox.”

Earlier Tuesday, she slipped out—unbeknownst to the press covering her—leaving her tour bus behind at her Gettysburg hotel. Reporters who believed she was still inside waited by the bus until they realized Palin was already touring the Gettysburg battlefields. The press scrambled to catch up with her at the Gettysburg National Cemetery before she took off again to Dillsburg. It seemed as though she was trying to fool the mass of press trying to follow her tour that’s taken her through historical sites in Washington D.C. and up the East Coast without a schedule or press notifications, but Todd Palin said the “intention” of the tour is to bring the group (reporters included) to see historic sites around the country, not to allude to the press.

“She talks to you guys, you are getting a lot, right? Being here you are getting a lot. There is nothing staged, there is nothing advertised. How many in this group have been to Gettysburg before? How many have been to the national archives? So that’s the whole intention of this tour,” he said.

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