Okay, I’ve given it more than 24 hours, and Sarah Palin’s resignation speech still makes no damn sense. I don’t mean that it doesn’t make sense in the Larger Picture or in the Grand Scheme of Things (i.e., is it or is it not a brilliant political gambit?). I mean that the speech itself just plain makes no sense.
Take this bit (all quotes are from the official transcript):
Life is too short to compromise time and resources… it may be tempting and more comfortable to just keep your head down, plod along, and appease those who demand: “Sit down and shut up”, but that’s the worthless, easy path; that’s a quitter’s way out.
No, Sarah, keeping your head down and plodding along is how actual governing gets done. The quitter’s way is what you are doing. You know, quitting.
Perhaps the strangest aspect of the speech is her repeated reference to herself as a lame duck simply because she’s decided not to seek reelection. To define herself as a lame duck though she’s only slightly more than halfway through her term is to admit that in her view the only function of the governor is to work for reelection.
And it’s not just that the speech has no internal logic or flow. The actual sentences are often incoherent. Take this one:
I’ve never believed that I, nor anyone else, needs a title to do this – to make a difference… to help people. So I choose, for my State and my family, more “freedom” to progress, all the way around… so that Alaska may progress…
I’m well aware that this is how she sounds when she goes off-script, but that sentence, ellipses and all, is something Sarah Palin* actually wrote down. She composed that sentence. She may have even revised it, tweaked it, polished it until it shone. So can someone please explain to me what it would mean to choose more “freedom” to progress, all the way around?
Of all the voluminous commentary on this event (Andrew Sullivan has a nice roundup), I think Josh Marshall nailed it when he said that “the decision was apparently so rushed and sudden that there was not enough time to come up with a plausible cover story or to get out the word about what it was.”
In terms of her motivations, Laura Chase, who managed Sarah Palin’s first campaign for mayor in 1996 before having a falling out with her, has the most intriguing take. Speaking to the New Republic, she doesn’t believe for a minute this business about Palin being “done with politics.” She believes that it’s all about ego.
She wants to be president now that she has a following. … The thing is with Sarah, she craves adoration. And the people that were sitting there at those rallies adored her. They would walk across coals for that woman. … Once you have a taste of that–it’s like a wild dog getting a taste of rabbit. You never ever go back. Nothing is ever the same, tastes as good …
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* I’m with Ezra Klein on the speech’s authorship: she wrote this one herself
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