WE WON'T HAVE PALIN TO KICK AROUND ANYMORE

A Washington Post blogger muses on the meaning of the Sarah Palin phenomenon now that Fox News has allowed her contract to expire:

The net effect was that Palin’s support got deeper — those people who loved Palin wound up loving her even more — but it also narrowed significantly. She became the nichest of niche politicians — someone whose support was a mile deep and an inch wide.

And so, by the time she had to make up her mind about whether to run for president in 2012, the decision was, in many ways, already made for her. Had she run, she would have been a sideshow, not a central player. She seemed to sense that and stayed out.

The Palin story is, in the end, one of tremendous talent misused. Like any number of playground greats who never make the NBA or, when they do, wind up disappointing, Palin had as much natural ability as anyone this side of Barack Obama or John Edwards, but was unable to translate that talent into results once the bright lights came on. That she never made good on her remarkable natural talents is a sign of how the political process can chew up and spit out those who aren’t ready for it.

More here.

I neither love nor hate Sarah Palin: from the moment I first encountered her when she gave her incoherent nomination acceptance speech at the 2008 Republican National Convention, I never took her seriously as a political figure. Rather, I saw her as the necessary end result of the celebritization of politics, and have always been fascinated by her from that perspective. She's been the Kim Kardashian of the inside-the-beltway set, always a joke, but a pretty funny one, worth some attention.

I guess we won't have her to kick around anymore. Of course, that's what Nixon said about himself when he retired from politics after getting his butt kicked by Jerry Brown's dad in the 1962 California gubernatorial race. Maybe America's favorite hockey mom will be back for more fun and games some day. I sure hope so.

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