Sarah Palin finally announced yesterday that she wouldn’t run for president, and her decision was perhaps one of the most patriotic of her political career. Her celebrity candidacy would likely have turned the GOP nominating contest into a circus and distracted many voters from the substantive policy debates and differences between the candidates.

Mrs. Palin’s decision was also probably one of the smartest of her political career. Gallup’s newest survey showed that her positive intensity score, a measure of how many more Republicans rate her very favorably than very unfavorably, was just 13, which was the same as Mitt Romney’s and two points lower than Rick Perry’s. Herman Cain had the highest positive intensity score at 30.