Flashlight can’t wait to dig into Sarah From Alaska, the campaign-trail exposé about Alaska’s First Quitter and her life on the 2008 campaign trail with (still-employed) Senator John McCain.

We even had that feeling before we learned the book’s authors, Scott Conroy and Shushannah Walshe, leaked the text of the so-called “lost speeches” written for Sarah Palin to deliver election night, November 4, 2008. (The speeches—one version for victory, one for defeat—showed up first at the web site The Daily Beast.)

The text of the concession speech gave Flashlight an eerie, we’ve-heard-that-before shiver, especially the part that reaches for high ground: “Now it is time for us to go our way, neither bitter nor vanquished, but instead confident in the knowledge that there will be another day…” The half-term Governor gave that speech—or at least part of it—by telephone to an election night crowd gathered inside Wasilla’s sports arena. The Press was there. We didn’t catch all of the over-the-phone speech—the connection was crappy— but some of it’s quoted in our article “The thrilla in Wasilla,” published November 6, 2008:

“Sarah Palin made an appearance by phone from Arizona. The connection clipped during her speech, but her familiar voice boomed over the PA system. ‘It’s been an amazing ride, obviously this is not our time. It’s not our moment,’ Palin said. She said Wasilla is an example ‘of hard working, pro-American families’ and that she is ‘neither bitter, nor vanquished’ by the defeat.” (For the full text of the article, visit tinyurl.com/not-bitter.)

Walshe and Conroy open their book with a description of jockeying between the Palin and McCain camps on election-night over the Palin speech. Senator McCain, the reporters allege, gave the order quashing the speech, which might’ve gone global via the TV cameras and radio microphones set up at the Arizona Biltmore Hotel.

It certainly would’ve been reported on Fox News, where Walshe worked at the time. (Conroy works at the CBS News web site.) The pair told C-SPAN’s Book TV last weekend they would not be surprised to see a Palin campaign in the future.

They promise a book that’s balanced, showing both faults and strengths of the campaigner known for connecting face-to-face as much she is for choking on Katie Couric’s softball questions. Walshe said on public radio’s Alaska News Nightly that the Palin camp offered interviews, when first approached about the book. But when Walshe traveled to Juneau, Palin’s political advisors pulled back from the offer. Walshe speculated on two reasons she didn’t get access: maybe the governor realized the book wouldn’t be one-sided; or maybe the zipped-lips had something to do with the governor’s own book deal.

scott@anchoragepress.com