As you likely know by now, Sarah Palin announced her resignation as Alaska governor this afternoon. She will leave office on July 25.I’ve said many horrible things about Governor’s Palin’s fitness for national office, and I’m proud of all of them. However, I always thought that her family was out of bounds and said so in public. I invite any of you to search my archives and find even one mention of her family. I gave up some fantastic jokes on principle.
Contrary to popular opinion, I don’t hate Palin personally and never have. I’m sure that she’s a very nice person if you get to know her. What bothered me about her is that she represents the very worst of the Republican Party specifically and American politics more generally. She, perhaps through no fault of her own, is the triumph of style over substance.
For that reason I hope that there are no personal or family issues that are driving her from office. I wish the governor, her husband and children all the very best in private life. That’s about as sincere as I get.
However, I can’t forget that this is politics that we’re talking about. I also can’t forget that subtlety isn’t exactly Sarah Palin’s strong suit. This could very well be a ploy to launch a presidential campaign early. Various polls have shown that she isn’t doing as well with registered Republicans nationally as her stature would suggest and her numbers in Alaska has dropped nearly 30 points in under 11 months.
If that’s what happening, it will be the most spectacularly monumental failure in American political history. You don’t quit the only statewide office you’ve ever held in the middle of your term and expect people to see that as a qualification for national office. Quitting when things are downright horrible at home and abroad won’t look great on a resume either.
Then there was the tone of her announcement. When Richard Nixon resigned the presidency, he said “the country needs a full-time president” and that he couldn’t put the country through an impeachment. Nearly half of Palin’s speech this afternoon was complaining about people being mean to her.
If she thinks that life is going to get easier in a Senate or presidential primary, she’s hallucinating. Any future race is going to be twice as vicious as the last year has been. And it will be the single greatest disaster involving an American citizen since Vietnam.
If she’s leaving public life to protect her family from assault by virtually everyone, no one sympathizes more deeply with her than I do. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, voters have no business knowing what a politician’s kids’ names are, let alone anything else about them.
However, if she’s going to moan about the cost of her ethics complaints, I can’t feel bad about that. She entered politics just as Bill Clinton was racking up $11 million dollars in legal bills, and as I remember it, very few conservatives were sympathetic towards his establishing a legal defense fund. You might not like it, but lawfare is an integral part of modern politics.
On Wednesday, I said the following; “I can’t figure out if this silly broad is running for the presidency or Oprah’s job.”
I think we have our answer.
Yes, I know that Bill Kristol thinks differently, but let's not forget that Kristol is the same guy who was responsible for the deep and abiding respecting that we all feel for Dan Quayle. Kristol is so wrong so often that I'm sure that he was in forties before he truly understood that his pants didn't have four legs.
My lack of respect for Governor Palin’s intellect is hardly the best-kept secret on Al Gore’s Internet, but I don’t think that she’s dumb enough to run for president after today. If I were to guess, I’d say that she has a talk show on Fox News by September.
Hopefully, she winds up with Sean Hannity’s job. No matter how hard I try, I still feel weird masturbating to The Rachel Maddow Show.
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