The NYT has a lengthy piece today on the lead up to Sarah Palin’s exit from the governor’s office: Palin’s Route to Resignation - Missteps and Ignored Advice.
The piece seems to suggest that the motivation to leave was based on personal and family pressures linked to her post-veep-nomination celebrity.
One possible interpretation is that she has had it with politics altogether. Of course, the stories over the weekend (and still on the wires today) would indicate that she isn’t leaving politics. As such, she is still going to have the press-related woes that the story notes and really the only thing she no longer will have to deal with is her schedule as governor. As such, it seems like she isn’t clearing her calendar to focus on family and private matters, but rather clearing her calendar to pursue national political aspirations.
Along those lines, the following anecdote is noteworthy:
Despite advice to stick close to home and focus on an Alaska agenda, the governor accepted an invitation to attend an anti-abortion dinner in Indiana in April, even though the state budget was hanging in the balance in the Legislature.When Tom Wright, chief of staff for the speaker of the Alaska House, suggested that the governor would catch heat for leaving, Ms. Palin stormed into his office and, according to a person familiar with the conversation, “proceeded to ream him out.”
The most interesting aspect of the story is that it would appear that she was receiving good advice from those outside Alaska as to how to proceed, and yet she ignored that advice:
Nick Ayers, arrived with a memorandum containing firm counsel, according to several people who know its details: Make a long-term schedule and stick to it, have staff members set aside ample and inviolable family time to replenish your spirits, and build a coherent home-state agenda that creates jobs and ensures re-election.
I still think she is planning to run, but wonder how long she will be able to keep it up.
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July 13th, 2024 at 10:04 am
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