Politicians are rarely what they seem when they’re schmoozing constituents. Promises must be made, the party line must be parroted and nothing can be said that might hurt one’s chances in the next election. So…what’s Sarah Palin really like? Most people would never know, and that’s why Levi Johnston has decided to spill his guts so we can all find out.

Find out his version of it, anyway. Johnston is the young father of Bristol Palin’s baby (Bristol Palin being Sarah’s oldest daughter), and he alleges that Palin is a different woman when the media glare isn’t focused in her direction.

“She [Sarah Palin] told me that once Bristol had the baby she and Todd would adopt him,” Levi tells Vanity Fair in the upcoming issue. “Sarah kept mentioning this plan. She was nagging…she wouldn’t give up.”

“I think Sarah wanted to make Bristol look good, and she didn’t want people to know that her 17-year-old daughter was going to have a kid,” Johnston added. Well, that goes without saying. It’s hard to run on the Republican ticket with a skeleton that big refusing to stay in the closet. At the same time, however, Palin’s concern could paint her in an entirely different light when looked at from another perspective.

Levi goes on to talk about how Palin acted when she lost her chance to become Vice President of the United States of America. He says she “was sad for a while,” and “walked around the house, pouting.” Johnston adds, “I had assumed she was going to go back to her job as governor, but a week or two after she got back she started talking about how nice it would be to quit and write a book or do a show and make ‘triple the money.’” Yeah, that sounds plausible. “Even before the campaign, Bristol was already the mom in the house, and she got tired of having to take care of her siblings.” It doesn’t necessarily follow, then, that she’d be so anxious to take care of her own baby, but whatever.

If you’d like to read the interview in its entirety, it will be printed in the October issue of Vanity Fair.