Why Sarah Palin's Going to Run

Rachel Maddow caught a video in which husband Todd admitted that Sarah Palin quit her job as governor of Alaska so she could make money--thousands of dollars a day.

In my opinion, this is why Sarah Palin will ultimately run for president as well. Sarah Palin doesn't particularly want to run for president and I doubt that she wants to be president either. If Palin wanted to run and be president, she would have already jumped into the campaign. Still, Palin is constrained to run for president because she can't maintain her current standard of living unless she runs. Much as Newt Gingrich's little "American Solutions" empire depended on the "Newt for President" tease, Palin's much bigger empire of her Fox gig, television show, book deals, and speaking tours all depend on the idea that Palin could run for president as the chosen representative of right-wing America. It's not like Palin would dry up and blow away if she doesn't run, but her speaker's fees, ratings, advances on her books, and general marketability are all going to decline substantially if she doesn't answer the call of the popular white right and run for the presidency.

Todd Palin's comments are an indication that Team Palin has some sense of the connection between Sarah's income and her politics.

I'm Thinking About Running for the Republican Nomination

HuffPost is leading with a teaser quote from China Ambassador Jon Huntsman about running for president in 2012.

Now, it appears, the ambassador is ready to make some noise of his own. Sitting in the echo-y living room of his new Washington home, Huntsman, a tall, lean man with silver hair and impeccable posture, pauses only briefly when faced with the question of presidential aspirations. "You know, I'm really focused on what we're doing in our current position," he says. "But we won't do this forever, and I think we may have one final run left in our bones." Asked whether he is prepared to rule out a run in 2012 (since it would require him to campaign against his current boss), he declines to comment.

The new media rule about prospective presidential candidates is that a prominent politician is always interested in running if he or she is unwilling to be Shermanesque in their refusal to run. Of course, Huntsman is not being Shermanesque ("if nominated, I will not run. If elected, I will not serve"), but he doesn't seem particularly interested in mounting a 2012 presidential campaign either.

And why would Huntsman run. The former Republican governor of Utah is the kind of "big tent Republican" who got beaten by Tea Party candidates in Republican primaries. Huntsman wouldn't have any more of a chance to win the Republican nomination than I would.

In fact, if Jon Huntsman declares his candidacy, I'll also announce that I'm running for the Republican nomination for President.

If Huntsman runs, I run.

And let's face it! I would make a much better president than any actual Republican.

Obama's 200 Day Triumph

The Obama administration has been in office for 200 days and Obama is carrying through on his campaign promises concerning energy legislation and health care. RNC chair Michael Steele is surprised and disturbed that Obama is not governing like a Republican president.

Obama's first 200 days in office should be seen for exactly what they are: a clear indication of where he intends to direct America during his presidency. It is a direction that rams massive spending bills through Congress in the name of economic stimulus and job creation, it is a direction that masks a costly job-killing national energy tax in environmentalism, and it is a direction that looks to put federal bureaucracy between patients and their doctors all in the guise of reducing costs and expanding coverage. America simply can't afford the president's experiments.

Of course, if Obama wanted to act like a real Republican leader, all he would have to do is resign on a whim, seduce his best friend's wife, or spend quality time with a mistress in South America.

Otherwise, he'll just have to struggle through.

Four Paths for Sarah Palin

So what exactly is the big deal about Sarah Palin's resignation as Governor of Alaska?

That's actually pretty difficult to define.

But I'm going to take a shot at defining Palin first, then defining the significance of her resignation.

Sarah Palin is the first major national political personality to emerge from the religious right since the emergence of the anti-abortion movement in the 70's. Where Ronald Reagan and George W. merely "appealed" to the religious right, Sarah Palin fully embodies the combination of brassy NRA aggression, evangelical sentimentality, and supreme disdain for urban, liberal, and minority culture that defines rural conservatism.

In other words, Sarah Palin is the Barack Obama of rural whiteness.

The significance of Palin's resignation is that it gets her back to the business of defining herself.

As Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin hasn't been in any kind of position to either defend herself from criticism or promote her world view. Not having her own media platform, Palin has been on the sidelines for debates over Obama's stimulus package, stem cell research, and the Sotomayor nomination. She hasn't been able to either represent or promote "her" values, keep her name in front of her constituencies, or promote the "Sarah" brand that started to develop during the McCain campaign

Palin has also been a sitting duck for her enemies in the Alaska GOP establishment, former McCain staffers, and the liberal wing of the mainstream media. People were filing the ethics complaints, Steve Schmidt was talking to any journalist who would listen, and magazines like Vanity Fair were making money running hit pieces.

Even Levi Johnston was taking shots at her.

In other words, the only people benefitting from the "Sarah" brand were her enemies. Being Governor of Alaska wasn't helping Sarah Palin seize the opportunities created for her by the 2008 presidential campaign. So she wants out.

With her resignation speech, there are four paths that Sarah Palin is likely to follow:

1. Run for President. If Sarah Palin runs for president, she'll be a top tier candidate for the Republican nomination along with Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee. Given that Palin is more popular among evangelicals than Huckabee, it would have to be said that she would start out in a stronger position than Huckabee and could conceivably knock Huckabee out after the South Carolina primary. It's easy to imagine a scenario in which Palin knocked out Huckabee herself and counted on second tier candidates like Tim Pawlenty and Newt Gingrich to hold down the Mitt Romney vote and give her a real shot at winning the nomination.

2. Become a Conservative Media Presence. There are a couple of media paths Palin could take. First, she could become a big bucks conservative motivational speaker, Republican Party fund-raiser, and evangelical/NRA personality. That would put a lot of money in Palin's pocket, place her in front of the friendly audiences that make her comfortable, and promote the "Sarah" brand with her core constituencies. It's also easy to imagine this as an extremely lucrative path leading to a presidential campaign. I can see the bumper stickers with "Run, Sarah, Run" on them now.

There's also the possibility of seeking a permanent position as a talk radio host or television personality, or commentator. There's big bucks in conservative commentary these days. These options seek less likely to me though because most of these kinds of permanent gigs require the detailed kind of policy knowledge that Palin avoids. People like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Bill O'Reilly all have a gift for formulating their conservative values, right-wing policy positions, and disdain for the opposition into a seemless package. It's tough to do and there are no comparable media figures on the left. Palin has a gift for expressing her values but isn't very good with either policy or engaging the opposition. So, it's hard for me to view her as the female version of Rush Limbaugh.

3. The Permanent Meltdown. There's also a chance that Sarah Palin could go into a more or less permanent state of meltdown. Depending on how one interprets "melting down," it could be said that Michael Jackson went through a 15 or 25 year state of permanent crisis. How long has Courtney Love been melting down? What about Amy Winehouse? Given the possibility of gigolo eruptions for her, bimbo eruptions for Tod Palin, and all kinds of other eruptions from her children, in-laws, and friends, it's easy to see the Sarah Palin soap opera as going on for a long time and not really ending while she's alive. It seems that popular culture in the United States needs a certain number of celebrities in a state of permanent meltdown. Maybe Sarah Palin could satisfy that need.

Finally, there's one more path Sarah Palin could follow.

4. The No Resignation Resignation. Given that Palin's not resigning until the end of July, there's a decent chance that the whole resignation gambit is a charade, that Palin is not going to resign as governor at all and is counting on an "outpouring of popular support" to persuade her to stay in office.

If I were Palin, I would start down the "conservative speaker" path and then make a run for the presidency.

But that sounds too reasonable for Sarah Palin's universe.

So, I would be surprised if Palin resigned at all.

However, the prospect of a permanent meltdown looms on Palin's horizon whichever path she starts on. My suspicion is that Palin is just not plastic enough for the constant re-invention that goes into being a national level politician or mega-celebrity.

Ultimately, it's easy to see being nominated as John McCain's vice-presidential candidate as the beginning of a long and ugly process of personal destruction for Sarah Palin.