Rod Dreher gives "a conservative read" to Sarah Palin's book. On NPR.

And he's not too kind.

The rap on Palin is that she's too shallow and inexperienced for the presidency — a conclusion that early Palin supporters like me came to during the 2008 campaign.

Like you? Oh, well then... I imagine that's why NPR picked you to do the "conservative read."

Alas, for conservatives in search of a champion, there's nothing in Going Rogue to challenge that conclusion. It's like this: Palin spends seven pages dishing about her appearance on Saturday Night Live, but just over one page discussing her national security views....

... Palin's economic program amounts to nothing more than tax-cutting, deregulating, and the endless repetition of shopworn GOP talking points.

This is the Republican Party's great populist hope?

Sarah Palin is selling a personality, not a platform. That's not dumb. She's doing the best she can with what she has to work with. She quotes her father's line upon her resignation this summer as Alaska's governor: "Sarah's not retreating, she's reloading." On evidence of this book, Sarah Palin is charging toward 2012 shooting blanks.

When reviewing a book, you should ask whether the book achieves what it set out to do. Dreher posits some goal other than the one Palin chose and slams her for not meeting it. She chose to write a personal memoir: What life feels like for Sarah Palin. So it's her "Dreams From My Father." The book Dreher aches for would be her "Audacity of Hope." Presumably, she is — her people are — working on that second book, and it will be fully fleshed out with exactly the conservative policy details that Sarah Palin needs for a presidential run.

Dreher admits that her choice to "sell[] a personality, not a platform" is "not dumb." But he leaps to the conclusion that her personality is "what [all?] she has to work with." That's not necessarily the case, and even if it is, with the infusion of great policy advisors, we will never know that she didn't come "loaded" with policy details.

You can't "charge" toward 2012. It's 3 years away, and it will take 3 years to get here. There's no great need to load up on much policy. What did Obama have in 2005? She is creating and extending her aura. She's following the Obama template. "Shooting blanks" — thanks for the gun imagery, but what the hell was Obama "shooting"?