It was the Alaska State Fair, August 2008. I passed the Right to Life stand with my daughter's face on their poster. "That's you, baby-girl," I said to Piper. "There's no member of this family your momma wouldn't sell out to promote her career." As we watched three commy abortionists being burned to death, Senator McCain called my cell phone. Would I like to help him lose the presidential race?

My parents moved to Alaska when I was three and I fell in love with the outdoors and killing things. Swearing the Oath of Allegiance in school gave me a sense of civic pride and I vowed to serve America and go to church a lot.

After coming runner-up, and last, in the Miss Alaska pageant, I married Todd Palin, a guy with his own snow mobile who blessed me with five children: Track, "we'd have called him hockey if he'd been born in the winter"; Bristol, "Todd said he hoped she'd have a rack like mine"; Willow, "we misspelled pillow"; Piper, "after our light aircraft"; and Trig, "short for the trigger on our AK47".

"Dang it," I thought, "this election campaign is getting mighty dirty." But Todd told me God had a purpose for me and after praying for his guidance, I was duly elected mayor of Wasilla by nine votes to six. Various stories have been told about how I dismissed a librarian for stocking anti-American literature on evolution and how I tried to get my brother-in-law fired from his job as a state trooper. Well I don't have space in this 400-page book to go into this in any detail, but if I did I would say that anyone who messes with God or my family has to deal with this pitbull in lipstick!

My proudest moment in office was seeing off an attempt by the police chief to introduce gun and alcohol controls. I hate liberals who don't understand how things work in the 49th State. It is a God-given right for any Alaskan to get drunk and take out anything that moves. Why else did God create guns? Would He have made animals out of meat if He had wanted us to be vegetarians?

Having served on the Oil Commission, I realised that Alaskan politics was rife with corruption and the waste of public funds, and when I was elected governor in 2006 by 73 votes to 59 I vowed to end pork-barrel politics. Mysteriously, though, I find I have omitted my initial support for the "Bridge to Nowhere, Jobs for the Boys" scheme, a $300m construction project to build a bridge to reach 11 people. I would rather now concentrate on my vice-presidential campaign.

"Tell me what you know about American foreign policy," McCain said, when we met at his ranch in Arizona.

"About as much as the average American," I replied. "So that's nothing, then." "Hell, Senator. I don't need to know anything about the history of the Middle East to know the Iraqis are all a bunch of Russian Czechoslovakian Shiites."

"Where do you stand on God?"

"Sarah Palin won't hold back on God, Senator. I'm proud to believe in the book of Genesis that says the Garden of Eden was in Alaska. Jeez, every December I even go out hunting dinosaurs."

For some reason I didn't get to see much of Senator McCain after this and although there were great moments, such as talking to President Sarkozy of Paris, Texas on the phone, our campaign never really took off and we were narrowly beaten by 250m votes to 23.

The mud-slinging started in earnest once we returned to Alaska. Rumours about my marriage circulated – dang it, why would I want to divorce a man with the biggest skidoo in Anchorage? – but most damaging were the complaints about my ethical conduct, all of which have been dismissed except the ones that haven't. So I won't be standing for governor again. But if the American people are as stupid as I think they are, it's Palin for president in '12!

Digested read, digested: Going Rouge, An American Embarrassment.