Palin: Why she bailed out of Alaska

Who needs Tina Fey? said John Nichols in The Nation.com. With last week’s bizarre, rambling, and altogether unexpected announcement that she will resign this month as Alaska’s governor, “Sarah Palin is now beyond parody.” In explaining why she’s jumping ship 18 months before her term ends, said Eugene Robinson in The Washington Post, Palin cited persistent criticism of her family, along with a series of ethics investigations that had hamstrung her ability to govern and left her with $500,000 in legal bills. But most of her “literally nonsensical” reasons only cemented her image as a clueless flake. Continuing to just “plod along” as governor, she explained, would be “the quitter’s way out.” Meaning that she’s quitting because she’s not a quitter? Exactly! “It would be apathetic to just hunker down and ‘go with the flow,’” Palin said. “Only dead fish ‘go with the flow.’” What kind of incoherent logic is this? So much for Palin’s meteoric rise as a national political figure and Republican presidential hopeful—a notion now exposed as “a cruel, unfunny joke.”

Palin’s decision “wasn’t particularly public-spirited,” said Rich Lowry in National Review Online, “but neither was it crazy.” She probably feels she’s simply outgrown Alaska. Following her dizzying turn on the national stage as John McCain’s running mate, returning to the small-time world of Juneau politics and “an increasingly skeptical” constituency must have seemed pedestrian. By resigning, Palin can freely travel outside Alaska, revel in the adoration of her working-class, culturally conservative fans, and command huge speaking fees. “Whether she runs for president or not,” said Marc Ambinder in TheAtlantic.com, Palin now sees her political destiny in the lower 48 states. There she’ll carry on the culture wars full time, stoking conservative resentment of the media, liberals, and Washington.

But “why should the country listen to, or vote for, a quitter?” said The Philadelphia Inquirer in an editorial. By bailing out for no good reason, Palin has forfeited any political credibility. Her résumé now consists of a stint as a small-town mayor and a failed vice presidential candidate, and she can’t even add the credential of one-term governor of a state with “fewer people than Delaware.” Not exactly a record on which to run for president. Palin’s chances of winning the 2012 Republican nomination are dimmer than ever, said Doyle McManus in the Los Angeles Times. Her disjointed and transparently self-serving rationale for quitting hardly helps the party image of “stolidity, orderliness, and competence.” And she lacks “what Republicans need most” to reclaim national viability—namely, new ideas.

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That doesn’t matter to Palin, said Noam Scheiber in The New Republic Online. Having gotten a taste of national attention and the roar of huge, adoring crowds, she’s now hellbent on running for the White House. “She’s like a bloodhound—once she gets the scent she’s never going to let go,” said Laura Chase, who managed Palin’s first campaign for mayor of Wasilla. “She wants to be president now that she has a following.” That following is real—and very enthusiastic, said John Batchelor in TheDailybeast.com. Two-thirds of Republicans, a new USA Today/Gallup poll found, want her to be “a major national political figure” in the future. For all her faults, Palin has a talent that can’t be taught; she “is as natural and gifted a presidential candidate as anyone since Huey Long.” The big-city elites may laugh, but for millions in small-town America, Palin is a savior who “will rescue the GOP from its ruination.”