I think Sarah Palin is going to run.
OK, this is not exactly stop-the-presses material. Many of you are saying, like, yeah, of course she’s going to run. Don’t you read the papers?
I do. And I know what they’re saying. There’s the book. There’s the book tour, which includes stops in Iowa, as if we needed the hint. There’s the book title: “America by Heart: Reflection on Family, Faith, and Flag.” Come on. You don’t waste that title on a non-campaign book.
There’s the come-watch-me-slam-some- Alaska-halibut reality-TV show. And then, in a far less likely setting, there’s her daughter’s dancing-for-votes reality-TV show, in which “teen activist” Bristol Palin nearly wins. Dueling reality-TV shows may not be how anyone else runs for president, but it’s exactly how you’d imagine Sarah Palin running.
This is any candidate’s dream rollout. Palin is in the news more than anyone who hasn’t recently taken an elbow to the mouth. Of course, Sarah Barracuda gives more elbows than she takes — not that barracudas have actual elbows. But in one week, she bashes Barbara Bush and she slams Michelle Obama, in an unprecedented first lady daily double. She offers up, in defense of her North Korea flub, a snarktastic (as the kids say) shot at Barack Obama — “A Thanksgiving Message to All 57 States” — which leads some to ask whether she wants to be the next president or the next Ann Coulter.
But if she’s not running, why would she have bothered sitting down for a major interview with the elitist New York Times? Unless she is serious about running, she doesn’t need any media other than the much-followed Facebook account on the home-office computer.
Some politicians may flirt with new media — there was the story, you’ll remember, of how Obama was unable to live without his BlackBerry — but Palin is the new social media. She makes news without ever having to see a reporter from her front porch. When I read her Facebook postings, I keep thinking of this movie-line paraphrase: You know how to tweet, don’t you? You just take your finger and click.
Still, there are people who insist this is all a long tease. After all, so long as she’s a candidate to be a candidate, it helps sell books, draw TV ratings and strengthen the Palin brand — which has, of course, its great strengths and some striking weaknesses. I think it’s too easy to hit her on North Korea — if you speak often enough, you eventually misspeak or misremember — but it was her shot at Fed monetary policy that got me. Does Palin really think that we think she’s qualified to comment on the merits of quantitative easing? I just wish someone qualified — Palin, Obama, Bowlen — would comment on the demerits of Josh McDaniels.
But every time the elitists say she’s wrong — like saying she shouldn’t have quit her job as governor by saying it proved she wasn’t a quitter — you know it energizes not just her supporters, but Palin herself. If you’re running as the grievance candidate, what more could you ask for? Palin’s taking names — see: Blueblood Bushes — and she’s taking numbers.
Of course she’s going to run. It’s as easy to see as the chip on her shoulder.
If you’re Palin, at some point, you hint and you tease and eventually you lose control of the conversation. At some point, millions of supporters say you’re the answer, and the momentum becomes irresistible. When Obama is floundering — his people in Afghanistan are negotiating with a fake Taliban? — and the economy is faltering and history is beckoning, you don’t turn away.
History says she has to run. Tina Fey says she has to run. Of course, the rules don’t apply to Palin. Her guy in Alaska loses, and it doesn’t seem to cost her. She gets behind a witch in Delaware, who is crushed. She backs our own Tom Tancredo, who gets only 37 percent of the vote against a guy who won’t cut his weeds.
But it came clear to me that Palin would run on the night when daughter Bristol explained that she wanted to win on “Dancing With the Stars” because it “would be like a big middle finger to all the people out there that hate my mom and hate me.”
The Republican establishment knows it’s included in every Palin family middle-finger conversation. These are the guys who most fear a Palin candidacy. You’ve heard Karl Rove on Fox. Maybe you’ve read conservative columnists Peggy Noonan (who called Palin a nincompoop) and Mona Charen. Maybe you wonder, as they do, how anyone can be involved in a feud with Levi Johnston and also be a serious presidential candidate.
Mark McKinnon, the old McCain hand, warns in the Daily Beast: “All the fun, the money, the power will only be diminished if she runs. Because I don’t care how you cut it, in the end she will lose.”
He knows even as he writes this, though, that he risks encouraging Palin to run. She will have those millions telling her they are lost if she doesn’t run. And she’ll have the many establishment types — and all the polls — insisting that if she does run, she’ll almost certainly lose.
I don’t know which would be more irresistible to Palin — proving her supporters right or proving her critics wrong.
What choice does she have? She’s already got a finger to the wind and who knows where else.
Mike Littwin writes Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-5428 or mlittwin@denverpost.com.
