palin's rational decision

I do try and be something like balanced here but... good God, the woman is a gibbering idiot. Yesterday's press conference just leaves you open-mouthed with renewed amazement that this person could have got anywhere within a million miles of national office - could have been taken seriously by anyone remotely serious themselves. She talks like a badly programmed robot, with stresses in weird places and no sense of, well, sense. Her sentences stream out in all directions like children being released early from school; unrelated propositions tumble incoherently after one another as if she's hired William Burroughs as her speechwriter. And this was a prepared statement.

But yes, you read that headline right. Although I doubt that Palin has a grand plan, or any kind of plan (I suspect she's very much of the 'Just do it if ya feel it' school of political thought, whose alumni include, well, nobody who's actually got anywhere) she has, perhaps unwittingly, or half-wittingly, arrived at a rational decision. I realise this puts me at odds with most sensible commentators. Here's Alex Massie, for instance:

Palin's resignation certainly gives her time to spend in Iowa and New Hampshire and the rest of the Lower 48 in advance of a 2012 presidential campaign. But that campaign would have been more credible had she completed her term as governor. Even then, a single term as governor of a small and strange state a long way from anywhere offered little by way of proof to substantiate Palin's claim that she had the necessary experience to be a national contender. Standing down before the end of that term seems a pretty good way to ensure that her task is more, not less difficult. That in turn makes one wonder if there's something else going on, some scandal or calamity waiting to be unearthed. That would at least explain this decision, even if it didn't also make one wonder why Palin remains determined to perform on the national stage. So perhaps it really is just a reckless, baffling gamble.

I don't think it's so baffling. Standing down now makes sense, whatever her ultimate objectives might be. This doesn't mean she has a good shot at 2012 - but then, she didn't anyway.

Here's the thing: you can't run for president from Alaska, not if you have a full-time job there. Being a presidential candidate requires a huge amount of cross-country travel. The country's too big for an Alaskan; New Hampshire is too far. It's hard enough be a candidate from Arkansas or Texas; it's just downright impossible be one whilst governing the 49th state.

Once you accept that, the next choice is whether to stand down in 2010 or now. Again, standing down immediately makes more sense. Palin faced a growing swell of opposition from within her state - everyone in the political establishment and beyond resents her - and they would have made her life miserable, and done everything in their power to stain her reputation further. As a lame duck she'd have been blamed for the painful budgetary decisions that are coming up without having any real say over them. That's a game she couldn't win. She's best off out of there.

Of course, everything that Massie and the others say about the problems this decision presents her with as a possible presidential candidate is true. She will too inexperienced, she will be tarred as a quitter. But the truth is, she was in a lose-lose situation. This is her least bad option, even if it is a pretty damn awful one.

Comments

[15step]

I'm glad you pointed out the jabbering mess that was her speech. Obviously the U.S holds it's best public speakers in high regard and the U.S electoral system gives great speakers as big an advantage as any other country, yet it still tolerates this rubbish.
I was wondering if anyone who was as elementary in their (prepared) speech could feature as prominently British politics?

[peter]

One Australian state, Queensland, was led for almost 20 years by Joh Bjelke-Petersen, a jibbering verbal wreck and right-wing evangelical nutcase whose strangled syntax, verbless sentences, and loony ideas would have made Palin sound like Timothy Geithner. But he stayed in office because of an extreme electoral jerrymander (not of his own devising) which allowed him to win office with just 25% of the (compulsory) vote. I don't know of any comparable politician in a country with majority voting.

[Rob Hyndman]

The difficulty with the rational actor theory is that it does not account for her haste and unpreparedness, nor the seemingly deliberate manner in which she snubbed or jilted some of her most ardent and useful supporters.

[Marbury]

Yes, although I suppose what I'm trying to say is that the decision she's arrived at is rational (ie it maximises her self-interest) even if there are some seemingly irrational - or 'baffling' - aspects to the way she arrived at it.