Sarah Palin ‘bottled up’ by McCain camp

The Sarah Palin bandwagon - which can be read either as a testing of the waters for a possible 2010 Republican presidential bid or as a chance to make money and cement her celebrity status - will roll into action once more next week as she goes on a US-wide tour to promote her memoir, Going Rogue: An American Life.
 
Despite tight security, contents of Palin's book have been leaked in advance of its publication next Tuesday. Associated Press, which claims to have bought a copy, says Palin is frank about her fraught relations with John McCain during last year's Republican campaign, reveals her horror at her disastrous television interview with Katie Couric and discusses her anguish over her teenage daughter Bristol's having a baby out of wedlock.
 
According to AP, Palin claims McCain's aides kept her "bottled up" from reporters against her wishes. In particular, she was not allowed to rewrite the public statement about Bristol's pregnancy, which was announced just days after her own nomination as vice-presidential candidate. Palin had wanted to take a tone that did not glamorise the pregnancy, she claims in the book.
 
Palin also says she only decided to grant CBS's Katie Couric an interview after she was persuaded to do so by a McCain aide, Nicolle Wallace. According to Palin, Wallace said that Couric suffered from low self-esteem and would see it as a favour. However, Couric was "badgering" and "biased" and condescending, Palin writes.
 
What is notable by its absence is any mention of Levi Johnston, the father of her grandson, Tripp. In the past year Johnston, has publicly sparred with Palin, claiming that the woman who almost became his mother-in-law has prevented him from seeing his baby son. In the latest of many PR stunts designed to rile Bristol and Palin, Johnston has decided to pose naked - with a hockey stick - for Playgirl.
 
But while Palin may have ignored him in her 413-page book, she does discuss him in an interview with Oprah Winfrey, to be aired next week. Despite his behaviour, she says, she regards him as "part of the family”. She goes on: "You want to bring him in the fold and kind of under your wing. I think he needs to know that he is loved and he has the most beautiful child and this can all work out for the good. It really can."
 
Going Rogue, which has been produced by the professional ghostwriter Lynn Vincent, is already an Amazon bestseller thanks to advance orders. Publishers HarperCollins are understood to have paid Palin a total advance of $3.75 million. ·