LOVE her or loathe her, you have to give this to Sarah Palin: she is indeed “Going Rogue”. Having been all but counted out as a serious presidential contender for 2012, she changed all that on Memorial Day, rumbling over Memorial Bridge on the back of a Harley (“I love that smell of emissions”), svelte in black leather amid a sea of pot-bellied Vietnam veterans biking into the capital for their annual “Rolling Thunder” commemoration. Is she genuinely running? Nobody knows—including, if you take her at her word, the lady herself. “There truly is a lot to consider before you throw yourself out there in the name of service to the public,” she told reporters who caught up with her “One Nation” bus the next day near Gettysburg. The Republican field was strong, she said, but not yet set—“not by a long shot”.

And that bus. What is it, exactly? Hardly the traditional campaign bus on the lines of John McCain's Straight Talk Express, which groaned under the weight of well-buttered-up hacks. Apart from a chum from Fox News (for which Mrs Palin works herself), there is no media pack on board. The media are not told where she is travelling, learning from her SarahPAC website only that the former governor will be meandering with her family through New England “to educate and energise Americans about our nation's founding principles”. But the bus is hardly designed for privacy either, decked out as it is with stars and stripes, the Liberty Bell and the constitution, and, in giant letters against a glorious mountainscape, Mrs Palin's own flowing signature. By hook, crook and presumably her own design, the media have caught up with her at every stop, where she smiles and giggles and is coy, but invariably finds something newsworthy to say, and by doing so keeps a nation guessing.

Unlike many Republican candidates, Mrs Palin can afford this slow dance of the seven veils. For ordinary candidates, job one is telling Americans who you are. Her fling as Mr McCain's running mate in 2008 has made her famous already. Since 2008 she has morphed into a television celebrity and author, quitting her job as Alaska's governor and adding a fortune to her fame. She is to be the subject of a two-hour movie, “The Undefeated”, which compares her to Joan of Arc and is due to premiere soon in Iowa, which happens to be the first state to hold its caucuses. Her bus is expected to find its way to Iowa, too, where she will no doubt encounter the fans and reporters who greet her wherever she goes. Granted, she is not always welcomed by everyone: though many of the veterans said they were happy enough to have her along, Ted Shpak, Rolling Thunder's spokesman, grumbled that nobody had asked her to muscle in on the bikers in Washington.

You can wager that the inner rage of the Republican field far exceeds Mr Shpak's. Mrs Palin's magical mystery tour has put a hideous dent in many of their best-laid plans. Take poor, rich Mitt Romney. Having worked in his dull and methodical way to the head of the race, he intended to make his long-assumed candidacy formal this week. And yet for some reason the media seem keener on pursuing their Alaskan Pimpernel than covering the grey man's big speech in New Hampshire. Michele Bachmann, the congresswoman from Minnesota and darling of the tea-party movement, is about to declare her candidacy from Iowa. Now the other darling of the tea-party movement is stealing her thunder without even troubling to say that she is running. Tim Pawlenty had reason enough to fear Mrs Bachmann's appeal to the social conservative voters he is aiming for without Mrs Palin fishing from the same pool. “I want to make it very clear: I consider Governor Palin a friend,” says Mrs Bachmann. You betcha.

It may well be that Mrs Palin's tour is intended only to titivate the celebrity on which her income depends. Those who think she is bluffing note that she has done none of the customary preparation. She has not hired a campaign team or glad-handed local supporters in the early-voting states. This, however, is to make the mistake of judging Mrs Palin by the standards of conventional warfare. She sees herself more as a guerrilla, adept in the arts of asymmetric warfare.

Watch your flanks

If she does run, says Mrs Palin, her campaign “would definitely be unconventional and non-traditional”. Even a media-savvy rogue on a Harley will find it difficult to tear up all the old rules of primary elections. But Facebook and Twitter are changing politics in America as well as the Arab world. Politicians no longer depend on party panjandrums and the gatekeepers of the media to raise money and get their message out. Many Americans doubt whether Mrs Palin is qualified to be president. But she has a big name, avid followers and the ability to raise money. There is a chance, however small, that she could win the nomination.

In which event, Democrats might well be the first to celebrate. Polls suggest that Barack Obama would trounce her by almost 20 percentage points (Mr Romney trails the president by less than 7%). So it is not only her immediate rivals but also the Republican establishment who have cause to worry. What if she is another Barry Goldwater, who wowed the right but led the Republicans to a crushing defeat by Lyndon Johnson in 1964?

The trouble is that Mrs Palin is not the sort to step aside just because people tell her she cannot win. She thrives on rejection. Twitting intellectuals and the “lamestream” media is part of her brand. She harbours a grudge against the Republican “blue-bloods” who blame her for Mr McCain's failure to beat Mr Obama in 2008, and would love to prove them wrong. She may not be able to win the presidency herself, but so long as she stays in the headlines, hinting at a run, she makes the party's sobersides look dull by comparison. For them, the phenomenon from Alaska has gradually mutated into the problem from hell.





Economist.com/blogs/lexington