Sarah Palin was impossible to miss in 2008, when John McCain plucked the little-known Alaska governor onto the national stage. A \u201cforce of nature,\u201d she blended folksy confidence with a scrappy underdog appeal\u2014then stepped back into a life that, in recent years, made headlines more for heartbreak than politics.<\/p>\n
Born in Sandpoint, Idaho, and raised in Wasilla, Alaska, Palin was a standout at Wasilla High\u2014\u201clife-changing,\u201d she once said of basketball\u2014before meeting her future husband, Todd, at a game. In 1988, the high-school sweethearts eloped at the courthouse, recruiting two witnesses from the retirement home across the street because they couldn\u2019t afford a wedding. They built a big family\u2014Track, Bristol, Willow, Piper, and Trig\u2014and a life rooted in Alaska\u2019s rough-and-ready rhythm. She reported the news, helped run the family\u2019s commercial fishing business, then leapt into politics, becoming Alaska\u2019s youngest\u2014and first female\u2014governor in 2006.<\/p>\n
Todd, the self-styled \u201cFirst Dude,\u201d kept his head down despite the glare. A champion of the grueling Iron Dog snowmobile race, he juggled oil-field work with parenting as Palin\u2019s career soared. When McCain tapped her for the 2008 ticket, Todd stepped in even more at home, especially as the family weathered public scrutiny\u2014like Bristol\u2019s teenage pregnancy\u2014under an unforgiving national spotlight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sarah Palin was impossible to miss in 2008, when John McCain plucked the little-known Alaska governor onto the national stage. A \u201cforce of nature,\u201d she blended folksy… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32630,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedailyglow.fun\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedailyglow.fun\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedailyglow.fun\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedailyglow.fun\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedailyglow.fun\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32629"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thedailyglow.fun\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32629\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32631,"href":"https:\/\/thedailyglow.fun\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32629\/revisions\/32631"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedailyglow.fun\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedailyglow.fun\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedailyglow.fun\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedailyglow.fun\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}