There’s No One Else Like Sarah Palin

posted at 4:03 pm on July 6, 2009 by Doctor Zero

Three days have passed since Sarah Palin allegedly committed political suicide by announcing she would resign from the governorship of Alaska. She looks pretty spry, for a dead person.

The commentary on her resignation was interesting, in that a lot of people worked very hard to make it seem more complicated than it was. Palin has a well-earned reputation for plain speaking, and she obviously didn’t run her announcement past a team of script doctors, or read it off a teleprompter. Nevertheless, the media treated her like the freaky oracle from “300″, portentously informing the rest of us What She Really Meant. These are the same people who insist that the confused, indecisive, deceitful current occupant of the Oval Office is a man of soaring principle. When Barack Obama attempts to obscure his sudden reversals by describing them as “what he’s always said,” news analysts nod their heads in agreement, and quietly delete his previous positions from their laptops. When Sarah Palin clearly lays out her reasons for resigning her governorship, the same people crank out a flood of “Ten Real Reasons Why Palin Might Be Quitting,” with her actual stated reasons somewhere in the bottom half of the list.

Palin’s decision to resign her post was surprising, but not irrational, or cowardly. She could be forgiven for wanting out of politics, after the savaging she and her family have taken. I’ve often wondered what she said to her daughters after David Letterman used them as props in his disgraceful “comedy” routine. How do you console your thirteen-year-old daughter after a late-night comedian makes a rape joke about her, in front of a national audience, to thunderous applause? What do you say to the kids when the comedian “clarifies” his remarks by saying he was really talking about the 18-year-old, rather than the 13-year-old? I cannot imagine what those conversations were like, and I can’t criticize a mother who decides she’s not going to endure any more of them.

I don’t blame her for refusing to take any more personal or financial pounding from political operatives using Alaska’s odd government ethics system as a weapon. Some have said she was foolish to cite the cost to Alaskan taxpayers as a reason for her resignation, since it was a paltry two million dollars. To me, that doesn’t sound like a criticism – it’s a campaign slogan. Sarah Palin: She Still Thinks A Million Bucks Is A Lot of Money. If she runs for president in 2012, it will be against an incumbent who thinks a billion dollars of graft or waste is a rounding error in one of his big-government schemes. A lot of people will like the idea of voting for someone who doesn’t use rolls of taxpayer dollars to wipe the ink off their hands after signing legislation.

I also think Palin has the foresight to understand that Democrat efforts to bankrupt Alaskan taxpayers were going to intensify dramatically as 2012 drew closer. Groups like ACORN have pockets full of taxpayer subsidies, and legions of hungry lawyers on speed-dial. The abuse she’s faced already was a warm-up act. The half-million dollars sucked out of her personal funds in legal fees was nothing but the price of admission to the coming horror show.

Palin would have needed to resign anyway, if she wanted to run for President in 2012. Doing it now leaves the governorship in the hands of her loyal lieutenant, and gives him time to build his own support for re-election. The first serious political damage to Palin will occur if polls show Alaskans are unhappy with this arrangement. I’m certain attempts are being made to generate such a poll at this very moment.

I don’t think Palin’s resignation represents the fiery end of her career in politics, if she wants one. A cursory review of the blog-melting traffic she generated over the weekend reveals the depth of interest and affection people retain for her. I doubt many of the people who support her are any less inclined to vote for her in 2012 today, any more than her most vocal detractors would have been any more likely to vote for her if she campaigned from behind a desk in Juneau – her eyes propped open by matchsticks as she tirelessly filled out gubernatorial paperwork, pausing only to record interviews and campaign commercials.

It would, however, be foolish to suppose her resignation will not pose a problem for her in the future. We can predict with absolute certainty that every single news article about her will mention it, and she will be asked about it during every interview she grants, if she runs for president. The media will pound her with the “quitter” charge, in a way they would never think to question any Democrat candidate, including the current President – who would have been summarily dismissed from any private-sector job he ignored as completely as his Senate seat, while he was campaigning. Dwelling on the unfairness of this will be much less useful than preparing to deal with it. Ronald Reagan proposed an Eleventh Commandment, “Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican.” I would suggest a Twelfth: “The rules are different for Republicans.” I don’t blame Republican voters for being angry about this, but we’ve had enough of Republican politicians acting surprised by it.

I suspect many of the obituaries written for Palin by well-meaning conservatives are based on the fear that swing voters will be driven away when the media throws the “quitter” charge at her. This is a valid concern. “Swing” voters often base their decisions on such things, which is why the media has so much influence on them. The answer is to give the press something else to talk about. Controlling the direction of campaign coverage was never something John McCain had any skill at. He labored under the misconception that reporters were still his pals from the Straight Talk Express days, but he could scarcely distract them from their rapt adoration of his opponent. If there’s one thing Palin proved over the holiday weekend, it’s that she has no problem drawing the attention of the media.

One of the crucial factors in McCain’s defeat was voter apathy. A huge number of Bush voters couldn’t be bothered to slog to the polls for him. If Sarah Palin climbs into the ring against Barack Obama in 2012, there won’t be many empty seats in the stadium. If she hits hard enough, I don’t think very many people will care that she has “Ex-Governor of Alaska” embroidered on her boxing trunks. Politics is all about possibilities, not certainties. Even those who feel skeptical about Palin’s chances after Friday afternoon must conclude, from the passionate reaction of the public, that an awful lot of people are very interested in voting for someone like Sarah Palin… and there is no one else like Sarah Palin.

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