Sarah Palin, starring as Sarah Palin

The Sarah Palin most of us see is a carefully-crafted character. Her and her handlers work hard to present us with a person that mainstream America can identify with. There have been missteps, but the fact that she is still one of the strongest voices coming from the right shows that their efforts are largely paying off.

The Sarah Palin most of us don't see is the one that shows up at Tea Party rallies and speaks directly to an audience that already identifies with her. It is at such rallies that the "God & guns" Sarah Palin can speak without fear.

Yet the story is not quite so simple. Ms. Palin is not officially a Tea Partier. In fact, if she tried to label herself as a Tea Partier, she would likely receive a cold reception. The Tea Party people make a big deal about their grassroots origins, and Ms. Palin was already a careerist politician when the movement began.

On Saturday, Ms. Palin dropped by a Tea Party Express rally in Wheeling, West Virginia. The only media coverage on the scene were Tea Party folks themselves. As such, we get to see Ms. Palin in action on friendly turf, but not necessarily on home turf. It is very worthwhile to watch this footage to see how she operates under these intriguing circumstances:



Here we see both Ms. Palin's gifts and shortcomings as a speaker. At first she sounds extremely awkward and cloying. But once she gets going, her performance is rather riveting. Most of what she says is the usual empty rhetoric about "putting our government back on the side of We the People". But she is a master improviser, in contrast to Barack Obama. While the President can deliver an inspirational speech to a big crowd, Ms. Palin can capture a smaller audience by speaking at their level. Note how she starts rambling on about coal mining after someone in the audience shouts something to her. She changes tack to focus on a topic of her audience's choosing without missing a beat.

Ms. Palin is also doing something else here. Note how she places herself at a distance from the Tea Party movement. She refers to them constantly in the second person. She casts them as the grassroots revolutionaries that they believe themselves to be without ever placing herself among their ranks. This was a point made a month ago in a Washington Post blog post:

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin (R) appears to be making a purposeful play in recent days to be the face of the "tea party" movement, a strategy that suggests what sort of candidacy she would run if she enters the 2012 presidential contest.

Palin has largely demurred when asked about her 2012 ambitions (or lack thereof) -- choosing to steer the conversation to the importance of electing Republicans this fall.

But, in a speech to the Iowa Republican Party on Friday night and then again in a Web video released by her political action committee today, she seems to be sending clear hints about a national bid -- and laying claim to the mantle of the tea party candidate if she does run.

In the video -- titled "Tea Party" -- Palin praises the movement as a "ground-up call to action that is forcing both parties to change the way they are doing business," adding, "It is so inspiring to see real people, not politicos, not inside-the-Beltway professionals, come out and stand up and speak out for commonsense conservative principles."

Indeed, Ms. Palin seems to be continuing on this course. But at some point she's going to have to steer the ship slightly. She is going to have to make her political ambitions clearer. We will have to see what happens to her relationship with the Tea Party movement at that point.

(Note -- you might have noticed that very odd commercial at the end of that video clip. Yeah, I don't know what to make of it either.)