Sarah Palin: Not going to be president

It's amusing to me that people think Sarah Palin is going to run for president in 2012 if McCain loses. Her favorable/unfavorable numbers in the new CBS/NYT poll are 32 percent favorable/41 percent unfavorable. That's where Hillary Clinton and Al Gore were in early 2007 after 15+ years of negative press. By contrast, Palin has been in the public eye for less than two months. I find it hard to believe that GOP primary voters would see her as the person they think can defeat Barack Obama.

Update 10/15 2:28 PM: Matthew Yglesias comments:

Maybe so. It’s striking to me, though, that explicit “electability” arguments don’t seem to feature heavily in GOP presidential primaries. This is a huge contrast from the Democratic side, where both the 2004 and 2008 primaries ended up showing a heavy focus on those questions. All signs are that a lot of conservatives like Palin just fine. If she can connect with a donor base, it seems to me that she’d be a reasonably strong primary contender. She’d have the leg up, meanwhile, of being better-known nationwide at this point than just about any other eligible Republican.

The problem with this logic, however, is that the Democrats haven't had an incumbent president since 1996. Isaac Chotiner at TNR makes the point I was planning to make:

Democrats chose an "electable" Democrat in 1992 after having lost three straight presidential elections. In 2000, the Republicans had been out of the White House for eight years and chose someone who sure looked electable (Bush may not have been as popular as McCain, but he was way ahead of Gore in the spring of 2000). Then, in 2004, Democrats were desperate to win back the presidency and nominated someone that was perceived as being more electable than Howard Dean. This year, Republicans may not have talked much about electability during the primary season, but it seems probable that after four years of an Obama administration, that will change.

Comments

[David]

IMHO it's ridiculous to think of Sarah Palin as President, just as it was with Dan Quayle. Yet, Quayle thought of himself as a potential Presidential candidate. A politician's ego is an amazing thing to observe.

[Raleighite]

She took a report that said she abused her power and declared herself to be cleared of even the slightest hint of wrongdoing. No clearer evidence of her self-created universe.

[David]

It was a strange report. It said she had done nothing illegal. So, Palin is justified in saying that it totally cleared her. Yet, the report also said she had abused her power. These conclusions seem contradictory.

[Jinchi]

Yet, Quayle thought of himself as a potential Presidential candidate.

Quayle actually was a heartbeat from the presidency. Fortunately, we had George W. Bush to show us what a Dan Quayle administration would have looked like.

[Raleighite]

Contradictory or not, the fact that the report stated that she HAD abused the power of her office could not be taken as clearing her from the "slightest hint."

[Craig]

David,

Are you serious? The report cited the exact statute she violated.

And this is only the beginning. It looks pretty obvious that construction on the Palins' house involved illegal gifts as well.

Perhaps she'll run, but she won't be able to survive the inquiry into her affairs associated with a full-fledged, months-long run for the Presidency.

And do you think she'll be able to avoid giving press conferences? Or real interviews?

I put my money on Huck for the Christian Right's darling in 2012...but I'd LOVE to be wrong on this one.

[David]

Craig - As I said, I think it's ridiculous to imagine Palin running for President. Could you please provide a link to where the report said she broke the law?

[Craig]

Glad to oblige:

http://download1.legis.state.ak.us/DOWNLOAD.pdf

Page 8 contains the following:

"...I find that Governor Sarah Palin abused her power by violating Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act."

[Raleighite]

Craig makes a good point - that the Religious Right will of course have "their" candidate, and who knows, Sarah Palin has a shot at that, though probably not the chance that Huck has.

So, then the question is, will the Right have the power, in 2012, to get their candidate nominated? I sort of doubt that.

[David]

Thanks. Craig.

Finding #1 says Palin violated Alaska Statute 39.52.110(a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act.

Finding #2 right below says the firing was a proper and lawful exercise of Palin's statutory and constitutinoal authority.

It seems impossible to reconcile those two findings. By definition, violating a statute means not behaving lawfully.

[Craig]

The firing of Monegan was legal and within Palin's legitimate authority. What was _illegal_ was Palin's leaning on Monegan to fire her former brother-in-law as part of a personal vendetta. Monegan was a political appointee, and served at the Governor's pleasure.

[Howard Craft]

It would seem that her ability to fire that individual without cause (or at will) may not have been established, prior to the investigation.

As to exercising undue pressure, or interfering with departmental issues, that appears to have been a lesser offense.

Some have said the determination was that she "exceeded" her powers but didn't "abuse" them.

I would not say she acted "illegally" but more that she violated a statute.

The penalty, if any, may be modest. More along the lines of a censure from the state legislature.

That's my take on it. I may be wrong (or more may come of this, still).

[Craig]

Howard,

Well, the actual word used in the report was "abused." If people want to argue that she did not abuse her powers, then fine, but no one can reasonably say that the report does not say this.

Similarly, I'll have to leave explaining the difference between "violating a statue" and "acting illegally" to the theologians.

Now, what will come of all this is indeed another matter. Is it worth prosecuting? _Will_ anyone in Alaska prosecute it? Couldn't tell you. The Department of Justice recently determined that Monica Goodling broke the law multiple times, but declined to bring any charges. That's life in these United States, I guess.

[MartyB]

Brendan -

My sense is that most GOP primary voters would feel that her low favorability ratings have more to do with the excessive negative pile-on of the press, and they think once more balanced coverage emerges after the election, the general public will warm up to her.

That doesn't seem that difficult to understand to me.

[Howard Craft]

Craig -

My entire understanding was wrong.

In essence, I was thinking that the finding of a violation applied to a lesser issue (more along the lines of a breech of a "code of professional conduct").

[Jinchi]

I think that partisans overemphasize the electability argument. Send up two candidates who run perfect campaigns and one will still lose. Send up two idiots and you get the same result.

In each case the guy who lost gets branded as a fatally flawed, obviously unelectable candidate and the victor is praised as a political genius.

Gore, Kerry, Dole, Ford - they were all perfectly "electable", but they still lost.

[Sean Balkwill]

What people are forgetting is that Palin will have to make it through the Republican primary to even have a chance at the 2012 election. Romney, Thompson, and Guiliani all would have had a better shot at the general than they did in the primary, because generally criticism from partisans lessens after a party circles the wagons.

The fact that Palin didn't get full support from her party speaks volumes about her future. I expect that criticism to be more open after the election.

[Asher]

I think that Palin's very popular with some segments of the Republican Party. However, Huckabee will run too - as Palin would say, evangelicals like him also, and he's a lot more articulate than she is. So they'll split the evangelical vote, and Romney will win out.

[Carmelo Junior]

Sarah Palin will be our first female vice president and maybe president you sexist retrogrades! She has fired up the conservative base, that same base that gave Reagan two terms in office.

[Raleighite]

Sexist Retrogrades? So, criticism of a woman is automatically sexist?