Sarah Palin – The Biggest Hissyfit Self-Martyrdom in Politics?
That’s pretty much my first impression. Sarah Palin will not just not run for reelection, she will actually resign in a few weeks, and precisely nobody seems to be real clear on why, including her.
Actually, my real first thought, and I know it’s a cliche saying, but I really mean it: what the fuck? Seriously, watch that video and try to put yourself in her head from the perspective of a rational human being. It is impossible. It is impossible.
Bottom line: Andrew Sullivan appears to have been right. She may really just be nuts.
Or, maybe the leaks of the last week were portends of something bigger coming down the pipe. The Vanity Fair piece and the Steve Schmidt revelations, it was becoming clear that the Republican establishment, if not the foot soldiers, were really not looking forward to having to deal with her again. Maybe the insiders had a lot more on her than we know, and she got wind that she was in their crosshairs for real.
But it sounds from her presser like she may be resigning the governorship to…mount a run for the presidency.
Seriously. Cra-zeee.
Matt Cooper sums it up:
Okay, so why would Palin do this on a Friday before a holday, traditionally a day for dumping bad news? A couple of theories:
1. She has more bad news to report. There’s something going on with her family again. There’s more to come with the state’s finance. Whatever. There’s no good reason for her to suddenly up and quit the governorship, her one claim on elective experience.
2. She wants the money. Palin is probably turning down tons of lucrative speaking offers, corporate boards and others ways of getting righ while she bides her time waiting for the presidency. Maybe she just cant say no to the money any longer?
3. She’s totally impulsive. Assuming this wasn’t a well calculated, move maybe she’s just being utterly impulsive. She got sick of the job, sick of dealing with declining revenue, sick of having to stay close to Juneau and Wasilla when she really wants to be in Manchester and Des Moines.
It really, really sounds to me like somebody’s holding something on her, and that their price is that she withdraw from public office.
There’s no other way to make sense of the comments in the speech…the “no more politics as usual” stuff in particular.
Actually, even that doesn’t really explain the full incoherence of the speech. Either this was a decision made in haste or she’s dealing with some sort of serious emotional baggage while giving it.
Comment by Rojas — 7/3/2009 @ 8:08 pm
You know what would be absolutely awesome?
If it turned out she’d been boning Mark Sanford.
Comment by Rojas — 7/3/2009 @ 8:14 pm
I still get a laugh that she was your big Republican VP recommendation, Brad. She’s a total head case.
Comment by tessellated — 7/3/2009 @ 11:56 pm
It made sense at the time. Brad didn’t have a vetting organization at his disposal; there was no earthly way of predicting that this would happen. Indeed, after her convention speech it STILL seemed like an inspired choice.
Comment by Rojas — 7/4/2009 @ 1:05 am
By the way, the biggest self-martyrdom in American politics still has to be Nixon after the California gubernatorial campaign. The Palin bit is a blip on the historical radar by comparison.
Comment by Rojas — 7/4/2009 @ 1:24 am
Hey man (tessellated), I feel bad about that too, in retrospect. But only in retrospect. I, nor you, had any way of knowing she was the way she turned out to be until she was well out of the gate. It apparently surprised most of the McCain team as well.
Palin always was a high risk / high reward choice. The nature of those sorts of choices is that they have a better than usual chance of turning out to be complete fuckaroos, which this one was.
Put it this way though: with incomplete information, absolutely no ability to vet or sit down with the candidates, and no access to inside information, I made two sound predictions about two fairly bold and not at all obvious political moves, and it turns out that the premiere and highest paid campaign consultants and strategists in the land were one step behind me. Hard to feel too stupid about that.
As to Palin, and Rojas’ comments: what throws me about the whole thing was, despite her protestations that this was in the works for awhile, it came out on a Friday before the 4th of July (not a time you would want to stage a political stunt if your intent was to maximize its impact), precisely nobody in the leak-like-a-sieve Palin-watch camps had any idea this was coming, and it was a thrown-together press conference with no notes where she literally just walked up to a podium and nonsensically rambled for half an hour. And, frankly, she seemed very rattles and scared. That’s why I keep oscillating towards a conspiratorial read too.
But, at the end of the day, there’s just no rational explanation that accounts for everything here. Which is why I’m leaning towards the totally irrational.
Comment by Brad — 7/4/2009 @ 1:21 pm
I hope you guys aren’t taking my heckling from the peanut gallery too close to heart. Stepping in it once in a while is an occupational hazard. Still makes me chuckle though!
Comment by tessellated — 7/5/2009 @ 7:10 pm
Yeah well it’s easy to be insecure as one of the first blogs on the “Draft Sarah Palin” blogroll.
Comment by Brad — 7/5/2009 @ 8:32 pm