On the eve of the July 4 weekend, Alaska governor and national laughingstock Sarah Palin announced her intention to leave office more than a year early in a rambling, confused speech of which we are still struggling to make sense. Appearing rushed and nervous, Palin gave a litany of supposed reasons for her decision, including the suggestion that only losers serve out their elected terms of office when there are better things to do, that she and her family have been unfairly singled out by the wicked liberal media for attack, and that she has now been called to a higher purpose than that of serving the good people of Alaska who elected her in the first place. In her speech Palin suggested that being a lame-duck governor wouldn't be any "fun" now that she has decided not to seek a second term, and that therefore she might as well leave now rather than waste any more time doing that dull little job Alaska voters elected her to do. All this, of course, makes perfect sense to diehard Palin fans like Bill Kristol, who assume that Palin's bizarre actions must be some shrewd political move, aimed perhaps at a 2012 presidential run. After all, they don't call her the Barracuda for nothing, do they?

Observers far less enamored of Palin than Bill Kristol are, of course, reading her actions quite differently. While Alaska GOP senator Lisa Murkowski blasted Palin for her decision to "abandon the state," other Republicans as well as Democrats are suggesting that, if Palin's decision is indeed a move toward a presidential run, then it will likely prove to be a disastrous one. Palin defended her actions in a Facebook message, saying: "...Though it's honorable for countless others to leave their positions for a higher calling and without finishing a term..., for some reason a different standard applies for the decisions I make." Of course the suggestion here is that, if it was okay for first-term senator Barack Obama to resign his seat to become President of the United States, it should also be okay for first-term governor Palin to resign her office in pursuit of the same. It is worth noting, however, that Obama resigned his Senate seat only after being elected president, as required by law, which Palin would likewise have been required to do had she been elected vice-president in 2008. Such is obviously not the case for Palin today, nor in any place even remotely resembling the real world.

Meanwhile, rumors that Palin may have announced her resignation in the face of an even greater scandal to come have been greeted by a threat from the Palin camp of legal action against bloggers who publish "defamatory" material about the soon-to-be former governor. These rumors concern possible federal charges of embezzlement against Sarah and Todd Palin stemming from the alleged use of publicly-purchased materials from the construction of the Wasilla Sports Complex to build a new home for Palin and her familiy while she was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska. Palin's ire seems to be directed particularly at liberal Alaska blogger Shannyn Moore, who also appeared on MSNBC with these allegations, but her threat of legal action extends also to other bloggers and news outlets deemed unfriendly to her. Obviously designed to intimidate and silence Palin's critics, this threat seems to have little grounding in legal reality, since there is no law against reporting allegations of possible wrongdoing against a public official if such allegations exist. There is also a little thing called the First Amendment right to free speech and a free press which the would-be Queen of America appears to have forgotten about (see Anchorage Daily News, Daily Beast, Huffington Post, Brad Blog).

I for one find it hard to believe that Palin's abrupt resignation from office could be any sort of calculated political move. Her announcement July 3 had a desperate, eleventh-hour feel to it that understandably suggests some further scandal may be in the works, though anything such as federal embezzlement charges have yet to be confirmed by any official source, and even a Palin gets to be considered innocent until proven otherwise. Maybe she really does think that abruptly quitting one executive office early will convince voters to elect her to another, higher executive office. On the other hand, as some have suggested, maybe Palin is leaving office early simply because there's more money to be made in talk radio, on the lecture circuit, and in selling copies of her upcoming book to her starry-eyed admirers than in being Governor of Alaska. Maybe she really believes that media elitists and bloggers have singled out her and her family for special abuse just because we hate them. Maybe she's just crazy.

Whatever the case, it appears increasingly unlikely now that Sarah Palin will ever see the inside of the Oval Office. 

(image: Mudflats)

Mark C. Eades
http://www.mceades.com