Palin, in India, Still Mum About 2012
India Today, via Associated Press Sarah Palin speaking at a conference in New Delhi on Saturday.
NEW DELHI — Sarah Palin said on Saturday that she wasn’t ready to announce a presidential run. “I don’t think there needs to be a rush,” she said during an appearance at a conference here in New Delhi. Running for political office is a “life-changing decision that so affects a family,” she said, and many questions still needed to be answered.
Ms. Palin’s speech at a conference organized by the media group India Today touched on many subjects, including her sympathy with the people of Japan and their “humble cooperative spirit,” the dangers of a green-energy policy and her children texting her news of a moose in the yard of her Alaska home. Ms. Palin made numerous references to America’s entrepreneurial and pioneering spirit, and India’s unlocking of the same to become a vibrant global giant.
Together, she said, the two countries will lead the world in the 21st century. “There is no natural limit for United States and India relations,” she said. India is the second-fastest growing major economy in the world after China, but is still hobbled by extreme poverty, inefficient infrastructure and political corruption.
Ms. Palin and her husband, Todd, were in India for such a short time that they did not get a chance to see the Taj Mahal, in part because it is closed on Fridays, the only day they had free time. Instead, according to local media reports, they went to one of New Delhi’s glitzy new shopping malls.
Hundreds of India’s top business executives, journalists and politicians packed a ballroom at the Taj Palace hotel to hear Ms. Palin. After being introduced as the “sexiest brand in Republican politics,” she detailed her upbringing and her Alaskan political career before riffing on central themes — the importance of individual independence, free markets and the need to drill for oil.
A “secure, stable supply of fuel is key to a prosperous America,” she said. “My vision of a free and prosperous America has much to do with energy.” But that won’t come from green energy, she said, which has destroyed thousands of jobs in Scotland and England and helped create a massive debt in Spain.
America should “capitalize on our own resources right there on our doorsteps,” she said, by tapping into billions of barrels of oil that are “warehoused” in Alaska.
In the past decade the India Today “conclave,” as the conference is called, has played host to Bill and Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, Colin Powell, Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto, the writer V.S. Naipaul, Afghanistan’s Hamid Karzai and the Queen of Jordan, among others.
This year, Ms. Palin’s peers include the Egyptian opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei, Germaine Greer and the “serial hacker” Josh Klein. The conference has been trying to secure Ms. Palin as a speaker for two years, executives said. “We see there is a change happening in America,” Kalli Purie, the director of the conference, said in an interview before Ms. Palin’s speech. “She represents middle America so it is good to get her perspective.”
Ms. Purie would not disclose the fee Ms. Palin earned from the speech, but said the group paid what Ms. Palin’s representative at the Washington Speakers’ Bureau, a booking agency, sought.
After her speech, Ms. Palin answered specific questions about foreign and economic policy. Asked how she might have the handled the financial crisis that led the United States government to fund billions in bank bailouts, Ms. Palin said she “didn’t think it was such a tough situation that had to lead to all those bailouts.” Instead, she said, the government could have allowed “the free market to decide who the winners and losers should be.”
Quizzed on outsourcing, a hot-button issue in India, Ms. Palin evoked free trade several times, affirmatively, to a smattering of applause from the audience.
She was critical of China and America’s relationship with the country, saying “America is economically linked to China. They hold much of the note,” referring to America’s treasury bills. It is a “dangerous place to be,” she said.
She also criticized her own party. “Too often Republicans have the fighting instinct of sheep — they just sit back and take it,” she said. The party was not always happy with her, she also admitted. “I’m pretty independent and some players in the Republican hierarchy don’t like that.” Her independence may have to do with being a “busy mom,” she said. “I’m so busy I don’t have the time to play some of the games these guys want to play.”
Asked why the party lost the last presidential election, Ms. Palin gave a nod to President Obama. “Candidate Obama had a strong campaign and was the agent of change,” she said. Ms. Palin agreed with moderator that she, too, was a change agent but said, “I wasn’t the top of the ticket.” She quickly added: “I’m not saying I should have been.”
Hillary Clinton was as strong a candidate as Barack Obama, she added, and “she had more experience.” Ms. Palin added that it will “be fascinating to see what Hillary decides to do in the coming months.” Ms. Clinton, she predicts, “will be a strong candidate in the future.”
“It is time for a woman to become president,” she added, though it doesn’t necessarily mean she should run. “There are a lot of good potential female candidates out there. There are a lot of gals.”
And asked about her husband’s prospective title if she entered the White House, Ms. Palin made the familiar “First Dude” crack, then suggested a new moniker: “First Gentleman.”
Quickly, though, she added: “Man, that’s getting way ahead of ourselves, isn’t it?”
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