My Girl Sarah

I don't mind admitting when I'm wrong, perhaps because I'm wrong so often I can't avoid it.  So here we go again.  I was wrong back in July, 2o09 when I fumed that Sarah Palin's political career was over after her abrupt resignation as governor of Alaska. Even before her resignation she'd become a political joke to many due to the mainstream media's egregiously unfair attacks on her. Resigning her elected post and thereby letting down so many supporters (financial and otherwise) was, I thought, an unforced error that could never be made right.  I couldn't possibly imagine how she could have a political future.  I wasn't alone.

But it's pretty clear now that she saw things that I and others were not in a position to see. What she saw was opportunity and she grasped it.  Not personal financial opportunity, which is what I suspected she was after at the time.  No, she saw the opportunity to become the leader of a movement, a grass roots revolution against the ruling elites.  The Tea Party movement was already a force last July but it had no leader.  Many argued that such a movement was better off without a leader, which would give the opposition a single figure to target and discredit.  For the already (in the eyes of many) discredited Palin to assume the position would give the left a big old bullseye to aim at, an easy mark.

But she played it beautifully. She has become the de facto leader of the Tea Party movement without ever announcing it or aspiring to it. She did it by simply showing up, assuring the faithful that she was with them, using her personal charm and magnetism to woo them, showing by her words and actions that she was not above them but one of them. The America people, especially those who make up the Tea Party, are not in the mood to have someone above them. In their opinion that is what has caused many of the problems the country is currently facing in the first place, those elected elites in Washington who believe they are above the rest of us, who have served themselves in government rather than the people who elected them.  Sarah Palin is so utterly middle-class American, so normal, so in tune with those who regard the Washington elites as abhorrent, that it was easy to become the leader of a leaderless movement.  As I said, all she had to do was show up.  No one has announced it or campaigned for it but make no mistake, she is the leader of this great movement to restore American honor.

She may also be the most influential political figure in America today. Who else is more influencial? You could argue Obama due to his position but his party is running away from him right now. Who in their right mind would have predicted eighteen months ago that an endorsement from Palin would be way more important than an endorsement from Barack Obama? Look at how many of the candidates she's endorsed that have won Republican primaries, many of them former unknowns running against incumbents. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it. The turnaround in her fortunes has been remarkable. She has political instincts that occur only in the very few and her ability to connect is a meaningful way with the average man in the street is a huge asset, especially right now when the public is as restless as any time in my adult memory.

Will she challenge for the Republican nomination in 2012?  I'm not sure that's the wise move.  She is still an incredibly divisive figure (though if elected I think that would change in a hurry except among the crackpot left, who will always hate her. She is very easy to like on a personal level and she is getting comfortable again, like she was before her vice-presidential nomination and the onslaught of criticism that made her gun-shy her and caused her to often have a deer-in-the-headlights look. She's also better than she was at talking policy.) I'm hoping for Mitch Daniels to run, or Haley Barbour, or Chris Christie.  They all have different strengths but each seem to me someone that could easily earn the support of the Tea Party while still keeping the middle comfortable.

But let's not digress.  This post is about my girl Sarah. I'm thinking now her best move would be continuing to do what she has been doing: travelling the country; showing up at events, appearing on television; reiterating values; raising money; endorsing the right kind of candidate. If we're going to have a political revolution that hands the government back to the people, she'll be on the short list of people to thank. And I think I'll have to reserve judgement on whatever moves she makes in the future.  She sees farther out than I can.