Palin Says Marked-Out McCain Visor Wasn't a Political Statement

On Wednesday, paparazzi captured photos of Sarah Palin relaxing on a Hawaii beach with her husband and children, and wearing a McCain campaign visor -- with her former running mate's name scribbled over with a black marker. TMZ called the visor a "searing political statement," but Palin tells Politico that she was just trying to keep a low profile.

"I am so sorry if people took this silly incident the wrong way," Palin said in a statement. "I adore John McCain, support him 100 percent and will do everything I can to support his reelection. As everyone knows, I was honored and proud to run with him. And Todd and I were with him in D.C. just a week ago. So much for trying to be incognito."

A Palin friend said that the hotel where the family was staying had chased away five photographers, and at least one more was at the beach snapping candid pictures. It's unclear exactly how Palin thought a blacked-out visor would keep her invisible from a group of paparazzi who knew where she was staying and, apparently, which beach she would be visiting. The next day, her husband, Todd, wore a T-shirt with lyrics from country singer John Rich: "If you don't love America, then get the hell out."

Intentionally or not, Palin has managed to stir up controversy repeatedly while promoting her new memoir, often followed by a hasty clarification on her Facebook page. She suggested that questioning President Obama's birth certificate was a legitimate line of inquiry, and then said she never meant to say that. She took to the Washington Post op-ed page to trumpet a batch of seemingly controversial e-mails between scientists as proof of a "political agenda" in climate science, then insisted she is not a global-warming denier. Next, she publicly traded barbs with Al Gore and California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger over climate policy. Schwarzenegger wondered if she is "really interested in this subject" or was just mixing it up to raise her own profile.

(Christopher Hitchens has called this tactic of suggestion-and-retraction "second-hand, third-rate innuendo-mongering.")

The visor could be interpreted as a symbol of defiance to the McCain campaign after earlier reports revealed -- and now lengthy passages of Palin's "Going Rogue" memoir have confirmed -- that she had numerous heated disagreements with campaign staff members. Senior campaign aides have called her book "a total fiction" and predicted that her assumed presidential run will be "catastrophic." McCain himself said he was "disappointed" with the memoir's portrayal of his campaign.

But "Going Rogue" is uniformly positive about McCain himself, and Palin has given little reason to doubt her sincerity when it comes to the Arizona senator. McCain has said he remains fond of her and sees her as a "formidable force" in the GOP. He immediately posted Palin's statement of support on his re-election Web site. It seems safe to assume that Sarah's visor and Todd's T-shirt were probably not part of her guerrilla message machine. But with Palin, you can never be completely sure. And somehow, her statements have a way of sounding a lot like what she says they're not.