I always maintained, and still believe, that whatever negatives Sarah Palin brought to the 2008 presidential campaign were more the fault of poor political management than of Palin herself. It was as if her handlers had no idea what made her appealing in the first place, as actively as they seemed to work against it.
I also said that after Obama won, what Palin needed to do was vanish for a while, a la Ronald Reagan in 1969. After an underground period of research and reflection, I think Sarah Palin 2.0 could have wowed.
She didn’t do that, and it’s unreasonable to blame the media. She’s actively and purposely kept herself out there. Furthermore, it’s difficult to read any sound logic into her decision to resign as governor of Alaska right now. How has she done anything but degrade her political position? How is she more effective now, making herself a free agent in the most rudderless Republican Party in history, rather than continuing to hold a solid and popular governorship?
There is much that I still like about Sarah Palin. However, it’s time for me to admit that I may have overestimated her political acumen.
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I’ll just go on record by saying Washington D.C. and the Northern VA area has the largest population of walking brain donors doing their part to keep rooms filled with CO2. She’s not going to miss much of anything. Can you tell my TDY didn’t go well?
Confusing at best. Disappointing at worst.
Still hot, though. 🙂
I think it’s the rudderless Republican party that’s grasping at their only remaining oar in the water. Someone is pushing at her … someone is advising her to do this stupidity.
I really wish she’d stepped off the radar … and stayed there.
To quote another major Republican politician/movie star: “She’ll be back.”
I now think of her as a quitter.
I haven’t decided how I feel about it, though I’m leaning toward Susan’s thinking. It’s not at all clear to me that there’s anything she can do now (politically) that she couldn’t do before. To be sure, continuing to hold the governorship would have necessitated doing it more slowly (and perhaps more subtly), but as I said, I think that was indicated. Continued competent governance through the end of her term still left her two years before 2012, and that certainly smells like how it should have gone down.
That it didn’t makes me think she’s not thinking of 2012. She’s really, really young. She’ll be 52 in 2016, and 56 in 2020.
It would disappoint me, but she could just be cashing it in too. I suspect there’s ample room in the punditocracy for her to make a thoroughly comfortable living never holding office again. Tough to blame her, if that’s how she’s thinking. No national candidate has ever been treated as poorly as she was (and if it’s too much, better we find out now).
As Bowler said above, she will be back. Just tough to call how.
One of Alaska’s Senatorial positions is up next year…
‘seester: If that’s what she’s thinking, I think she’s badly damaged it with her resignation speech (doing what’s best for Alaska, &c.). I don’t think she can make that speech and then plausibly say she’s a candidate for the Senate.
My guess is she’s headed toward a book, a lucrative turn on the speaking circuit, and parts unknown after that.
Ross Douthat had an excellent editorial today.