Why Sarah Palin won’t be President any time soon

Via The Dish, we get this handy little pie chart breaking down just how unpopular Sarah Palin actually is with the American people. Suffice to say, it doesn’t look good for the Alaskan ex-governor, at least not in politics. But with a book and a lucrative speaking career, and maybe a slot after Greta Van Susteren sometime in her future, Palin hardly needs to worry about politics. All she really needs to do is hold the threat of her candidacy over us and she’ll remain lime-lighted and rabidly popular amongst the Republican base.

I don’t understand Andrew’s obsession with Palin. I do understand that the left is purely delighted at the idea of her potential bid for the presidency because they know full well she has no chance at winning.

She is simply not a serious candidate for the 2012 election, and even if she were to wrap up the primary victory there is no conceivable way she’d win. It strikes me that she has a lot more interest in promoting herself as a brand or a product than as a leader or a serious political thinker. She’s offered nothing of substance since the November elections last year. She’s only chimed in on the health care debate long enough to utter the words “death panels” and then retreat to her speaking circuit. On other pressing issues, from global warming to the economy, she has been either silent or parroted the accepted, tried and true talking points.

As much as I don’t understand the left’s obsession with Palin, I have an even harder time understanding the right’s blind faith in her.

Daniel Larison writes:

Liberal journalists actually take great delight in the Palin phenomenon. Yes, of course, they don’t want to see her in power, but I think they do want to see her prosper and thrive as the face of the Republican Party. An American right led by or identified with Palin is one that they can very easily ridicule and discredit, and at the same time they can be confident that a Palinized GOP poses no threat to anything they value. Palin is not going to bring the party out of the minority, and were she to lead the party it would more or less guarantee continued Democratic ascendancy for many years to come. Her content-free pseudo-populism ensures that the legitimate political concerns of her constituency remain irrelevant to real policy debates. Media outlets also thrive on controversy and conflict, both real and manufactured, and Palin continues to give them plenty of opportunities for both.

One of the lessons we were supposed to have learned from the off-year elections, and one that I think is correct, is that the public craves competent leadership and that it penalizes any party that fails to deliver it. 2006 and 2008 were repudiations of the GOP because of the war in Iraq and the financial crisis, but more broadly these elections were the public’s demands that the government be ably and competently administered. If McCain ever had a chance of winning, his erratic and confused response to the financial crisis destroyed it, and between his selection of Palin and his insane response to the war in Georgia he drove away many others who simply could not trust someone with such poor judgment with such great power. The elections earlier this month were much the same in that they were protests against Democratic failure to govern well. The Palinites propose to rally behind someone who has no particularly impressive record of accomplishments, who abandoned the highest executive office she has held before completing one term, and who seems to have no great expertise behind her. In other words, Palinites are telling the public that they have no interest in providing competent leadership, and they expect the public to respond favorably to this.

Quite right. Bob McDonnell rode to power in Virginia on a pragmatist’s ticket. Palin may have been able to point out some small successes in Alaska but she lost any credibility on that front when she resigned from office. Whether she did that to have more time to promote her book or because she was under too much pressure is irrelevant. It was a death blow to any future primary debate.

Add to this the fact that it will be very difficult for her to find sources of funding, and that vice-president candidates who previously lost in an election almost never get the nomination again, and you start to see how grim the political picture is for Palin. Unless you really have cocooned yourself off into the very narrow, and shrinking, right-wing base and dismiss every other warning sign as a ploy by the liberal mainstream media, then you will have noticed by now that Palin is simply not presidential material. And most of America would agree with you.

In any case, I don’t see Palin’s popularity or credibility or capacity to lead improving at all over the next couple of years. Since primaries will likely unofficially begin in 2010, we’ll know sooner than later (unfortunately) whether she’ll run. I think she will. And I think there’s absolutely nothing to worry about.

(Image via Daylife)