Pundit Country

Time does a quick rundown of what author Jay Newton-Small believes are the leading reasons for her resignation as Alaska’s governor.

Before going further, Palin’s comments on Twitter and Facebook post-announcement have not done her any favors. For one, even her allies now readily admit that her excuse of quitting is barely an excuse at all and doesn’t hold up to the even the most charitable smell test. however, Palin is appears top be at her happiest when the spotlight is on her, so like any narcissist, I’m sure she’s loving the continued speculation on her motives and will likely try to address it again on her final appearance as AK’s governor at the end of the month, barring some scandal that may hit the airwaves before then.

I read and thought over the reasons Newton-Small believes are her reasons for bailing about halfway through her first term as the state’s leading government official and with one exception (having amassed too much debt to service due to the number of ethics complaints against her), I tend to disbelieve most of them.

For anyone who has followed her career from her days as Mayor (like blogger Shannyn Moore), it doesn’t seem that Palin was ever really a team player that reason #2 would suggest. There are simply too many stories already out there about her treatment of people who openly (or even privately) had the courage to tell her the things that she didn’t want to hear. By the time she reached the capital, her reputation had already preceded her.

As for the idea that people who thought she could just walk away from another job to pursue a better one, this is laughable as a plausible excuse. Even self-proclaimed cultural warriors recognize even the most basic work ethic; if you’re hired to do a job, you stay and do it to the best of your ability. If anything, this one step will be the one that damns her if she’s crazy enough to think she still has a shot in 2012.

As for reason #4, there are enough people from both sides of the aisle paying attention to her messages that the fact the she’s physically located in a remote location is also nonsensical. Her messages were getting out loud and clear. I suspect that Palin herself wanted to be closer to the action rather than tweeting it where she couldn’t see the reaction that bothered her. Again, this gets back to wanting to be the star of the show. and when she couldn’t see her own cyber-reflection or saw how pundits and activists were interpreting it, it got to her.

Generally, I believe that after the national spotlight, being down home just didn’t do it for her anymore. She wants to be where media have better access to her and she can control the story (or believe that she can). None of that was possible if she was going to hang out with the locals dealing with state issues she no longer had any taste for.

As I said at the beginning of the post, while reason #5 is at least plausible considering the sheer level of charges against her, I tend to be in the camp that believes there was some other, bigger reason (i.e.scandal) that she was never going to be able to avoid and still hold onto her office. Perhaps her thinking is that she can defend herself from it if she is no longer shackled to the podium of the state,or just maybe, as Josh Marshall speculated, she really is that mentally unbalanced and thinks she can just quit when the job gets hard. I’m hoping that isn’t the reason, but I don’t think I would be surprised if that turned out to be the case.

Related articles

• Alaska Gov-To-Be Says Legal Bills Led To Resignation (alan.com)
• Gov. Sarah Palin resigns, fueling speculation about her political future. (slate.com)
• Palin takes to Web for hints of political future (ctv.ca)