Jamie
Weinstein
Read Jamie's bio and previous columns
July 7, 2009
Palin’s Ambitions
Buried, As They Should Be
If
one were asked to bet last week on who would be the first Republican
governor to have the “former” modifier appended to their governor title,
South Carolina’s Mark Sanford or Alaska’s Sarah Palin, conventional
wisdom would have suggested Mark Sanford because of his recently exposed
extracurricular activities as the self-appointed South Carolina
Ambassador to Argentina. But with Sarah Palin’s surprise announcement on
Friday that she would be stepping down as governor at the end of the
month, it looks like conventional wisdom, in this instance, has been
proven wrong.
But conventional wisdom, like conventional politics, isn’t always wrong.
Conventional wisdom dictates, among other things, that one should not
use electrical appliances while taking a bath, that when you go
skydiving you should probably take along a parachute, and that you
shouldn’t attend a White House Halloween party dressed as Osama Bin
Laden. In these instances, conventional wisdom seems pretty much spot
on.
As does conventional politics when it comes to the practice of serving
out one’s full term as governor unless some compelling reason – serious
illness, election to higher office, etc. –intercedes. If you quit the
post you were elected to without such a compelling reason, you become a
quitter.
So
when Sarah Palin said in her nonsensical speech on Friday that her
decision to resign was consistent with her commitment to “no more
conventional politics as usual,” I suppose she expected Americans to
accept without scrutiny a slogan that is sometimes a positive as
something that is self-evidently right. Sorry Sarah, but if politics as
usual means not quitting your job mid-term, then sign me up as a fan of
politics as usual.
It
is impossible for one to look at Palin’s July 3 resignation announcement
as sincere and genuine. She is not resigning at the end of the month
because she thinks her resignation is in the best interest of her state,
as she claimed Friday. She is resigning because she thinks her
resignation is in the best interest of Sarah Palin – and, perhaps, her
family. The rambling and incoherence and silly reasoning that defined
her speech was nothing more than a failed attempt to bolster a weak
justification for getting out of a commitment she no longer wants to
keep. We have all seen such sorry justifications before and probably
have offered a few of our own, though doubtfully to get ourselves out of
a commitment as significant as governor of a state.
That said, one can certainly understand why Palin would decide that she
is tired of the spotlight after the attacks she has endured in the press
and in popular culture, attacks that were often unfair. It is completely
understandable that Palin, with all her weighty family obligations, may
have determined that she can no longer juggle both her family
responsibilities and her governmental duties. If that’s the case, she
should have said so.
But if Palin wants to depart center stage because of the nastiness of
politics, then she shouldn’t expect American voters to elect her to
higher office again. Or, if the real reason she resigned is so she can
spend more time working on a 2012 presidential campaign, her quitting on
Alaskans without compelling cause should be a disqualifier.
As
of now, pundits are only left to guess what motivated Palin’s
resignation. Palin’s baffling move led some to speculate that her
resignation was driven by some yet-to-be-discovered scandal, though no
one seems to have a strong idea, much less evidence, of what that may
be.
Ironically, if Palin is to have any chance at being a legitimate
candidate for the Republican nomination in 2012, or ever, it may only be
possible if there is an actual scandal or compelling issue that she is
hiding. If she resigned because (God forbid) she or someone in her
family is ill or because she discovered that Todd Palin was unfaithful,
this may provide Sarah Palin another chance down the road to enter
politics. It would be understandable in such circumstances, after all,
that Palin would step down in order to rebuild her family, or nurse a
family member or herself back to health.
Let me emphasize that there is absolutely no evidence – no evidence
– of any such circumstance, and as far as I know there aren’t even
rumors. But the irresponsibility of Palin’s decision to quit on Alaska
for the spurious reasons she gave on Friday presents an odd situation.
Only if an actual scandal is being hidden from the public, or a hidden
tragedy, could Palin actually salvage her presumed political ambition to
be a legitimate presidential contender. I, for one, hope there is no
hidden tragedy, and this has nothing to do with the fact that I was
never a big fan of the idea of a President Palin to begin with.
As
of now, from the limited information we have to go on, the political
prognosis for Sarah Barracuda is grim, as it should be after Friday.
Unless the political jaws of life come to the rescue, we must bury Sarah
Palin’s legitimate presidential ambitions. Born on August 27, 2008, they
died in the Alaskan tundra July 3, 2009.
© 2009
North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.
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