In Alaska, many pine for the old Palin

Dissatisfaction is summed up by one bumper sticker: “Hey Sarah ... the job’s in Juneau.”

In Palin’s defense, she spent most of the past legislative session in the capital, says John Bitney, a high school friend who was her legislative liaison until a falling-out with the governor got him fired.

There is also the challenge of balancing parochial Alaskan issues with the demands of being a national Republican star. “She’s focused on the national level now, and she’s playing in a league that’s pretty big,” says Mr. Bitney, now a legislative staffer.

If some constituents have soured on Palin, she might feel the same way about some of them. Her selection to the GOP ticket alongside John McCain thrust Alaska’s low-key and insular politics onto the national stage, subjecting her to piercing scrutiny. On top of the “troopergate” investigation launched before she joined the top GOP ticket, a wave of ethics charges has dogged her, socking Palin with personal legal bills topping $500,000. Many have been hypertechnical complaints that probe the gray area between her in-state duties and national activities. So far, at least a dozen complaints have been dismissed, including one Palin deemed “bogus” that concerned her logo-adorned attire at the Iron Dog snowmobile race.

Defensive missives from Palin's office

Hard feelings have emerged. Belligerent, defensive missives from Palin’s office include statements urging Alaskans to rise up in a “backlash” against citizens filing ethics complaints and ridiculing lawmakers for criticizing her Lower 48 trips. “We did not anticipate that the governor’s political opponents would want their hands held in the final hours of the session,” an April 13 press release said.

During the legislative session, Palin even came to the House speaker’s office and scolded his top aide. It was “a terrible breach of respect of the Legislature by Gov. Palin. This kind of lack of decorum has never happened before,” opined the Alaska Legislative Digest, a newsletter co-written by a former House speaker.

Stephen Taufen, a fisheries activist who was once a staunch Palin supporter but is now “un-enamored with her,” questions her emotional state. “I don’t know how much to blame her or stage-show politics,” he says, but adds, “I’m not going to join the masses of people who want to psychoanalyze her.”

Less reluctant is Bob Poe, a former state trade official and former head of Anchorage’s economic-development corporation. A Democrat, he’s already launched a gubernatorial bid.

“I’m certainly not qualified to say she has a narcissistic personality disorder,” Mr. Poe says. But actions that aid her national quest at the expense of Alaska interests, such as the rejection of federal funds, are “narcissistic by definition, because it’s all about her; it’s not about Alaska,” he says.

In earlier times, a centrist tone

It wasn’t always this way. Back in Palin’s honeymoon days in office, she struck a centrist tone.

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