The view from Alaska

But Palin doesn’t care what the wishful thinkers think. She’s too busy hosting Tea Parties and dropping hints about 2012, and after watching an hour of “Sarah Palin’s Alaska,’’ it’s evident that she’s trying to have it all. And if anyone can pull it off, it’s Palin — who might be the first true 21st-century candidate, master of a new media landscape.

Politicians have been dabbling in entertainment, more and more; the late night talk shows are now a presidential campaign requirement. President Obama just went on “The Daily Show,’’ and next month, he’ll make a cameo on “Mythbusters.’’ But he’s not a TV star so much as a reluctant elite, slumming it in Snooki’s world.

Palin, on the other hand, understands how to use reality TV the way the Kennedys understood how to use photography. In “Sarah Palin’s Alaska,’’ produced by Mark Burnett, she’s a bona fide folk hero, in makeup, with flawless hair. She’s fishin’, she’s shootin’, she’s tryin’ to keep boys out of her daughter Willow’s bedroom. She’s draggin’ her family with her; in the opening credits, their first names flash across the screen in cutesy print as they handle firearms and wrestle fish. (Not all relatives are equal; little Trig appears only briefly tonight, waving from the window as his parents go off mountain climbing. And husband Todd is omnipresent but near-silent. Just like a political wife.)

In the introduction, Palin says she wants to introduce the country to “hard-working Alaskans’’ and her home state’s natural beauty. And while the Alaskan landscape does make an occasional appearance, it’s always in service of Palin’s carefully cultivated image. Shots of a grizzly bear with her cubs becomes a metaphor for the metaphor of the hockey mom. An extended sequence in which Palin scales a rock is a portrait of perseverance.

The rest of the time, we get to see “reality’’ Sarah, baking with her daughter one minute, then running to her personal TV studio out back to do a guest spot on Fox News. She even uses the show to get even with an enemy: the writer Joe McGinnis, who rented the house next door to complete a tell-all book, is insulted frequently by the Palins, and filmed sitting on his balcony, with his head fuzzed out. (One might ask who’s exploiting whom, but it’s doubtful Palin cares.)

You can see all this as undignified and crass, and it certainly doesn’t burnish her policy credentials. But Palin understands what she’s doing. She made a deal with TLC — well, for money, but also for the same reason George W. Bush chose Matt Lauer, the objective-but-gentle morning guy, to launch his book tour. The Bush-Lauer interview was like a time-travel trip to a distant past when people talked about weapons of mass destruction. But it was also a careful attempt to restore Bush’s pre-presidency image as a regular, flawed, self-effacing guy. Forget the war, or that Florida election mess. The recovered alcoholic, the former screw-up scion, was still the guy you wanted next to you at the ballgame. Al Gore would have given you a turgid lecture about the infield fly rule.

Lately, Republicans have been far more successful than Democrats at appearing as regular people — folks you can relate to, with flaws you can relate to. Obama was elected as an icon on a pedestal. Now, people are incensed because he doesn’t seem human enough.

The Sarah Palin on TLC is something in between: a woman-of-the-people and a heroic cult figure at once. That doesn’t always make for riveting TV, and it’s not a surefire path to higher office. But Palin will keep, well, tryin’. And when she grins at the camera and says, “you can see Russia from here . . . almost,’’ the joke is on her critics.

Joanna Weiss can be reached at weiss@globe.com.