PrintJuly 4, 2009
Wall to wall Palin
The left is gloating while hitting the "coming scandal" angle. Even indictments! On the right, pundits and bloggers are all over the lot; she's finished (no she's not); she quit because of the attacks on the family (or not); she's running (or not).
The boss has it about right I think. Tom Lifson's piece this morning:
At this point there is much speculation about why Sarah Palin abruptly announced her impending resignation from Alaska's governorship. Her critics are already calling her "erratic" but she is consistent in one respect: she cares little for the established ways of doing things when she thinks she has a better course of action.
The conventional wisdom holds that you bury news when it is announced at 4 PM on Friday of a holiday weekend. But the comparative news vacuum seems to be only amplifying the echoes reverberating through the political world. Does anyone think that Sarah Palin minds the fact that the Bigfoot anchors and columnists are on Martha's Vineyard and unavailable to slam her?
Say what you will about her readiness for national office, her knowledge of issues, or any other criticism you can come up with. The fact is - as her detractors in the McCain camp discovered - this is not a conventional politician and that she clearly marches to her own drummer.
Establishmentarians that make up the inside the beltway crowd hate personalities they can't put in one of their little boxes. Goodness, if they're not in one of their narrowly defined cubicles, how are they going to talk or write intelligently about them? Palin will continue to flummox them and could care less if she does.
I'm sure she has her own plans, her own timetable. Perhaps 2012 or 2016. But it is easy to forget how young she is.
She will only be 56 in 2020.
