Palin Is Not A Defeated Woman, Not A Beaten Politician

I have now viewed the video of Palin's press conference, in which she announced her resignation, several times. I have reviewed the text of her statement, as well as the statements of the Lt. Governor and recently her attorney. I have thought about these developments in the context of her career in elected office. After the surprise of her announcement has worn off, I now see her performance and statements in a different light. She is not a defeated person, not a vanguished woman or politician.  The press conference was called quickly and her announcement unrehearsed and not read from a written script. She seems almost liberated and revived, as if the decision had liberated energy. But I think the energy that is evident in her statement is not from relief to be removed from the battlefield, so to speak, but from a change of battlefields. The attacks against her by the fraudulent ethics complaints and law suits had forced her to play defense, whereas her natural posture is positive idealism. I think it is reconnection with her deep, natural idealism, her religious faith, and her faith in populist democracy that has energized her, and I believe this is the energy we see in the press conference. Whatever her relationship to the organized political system and its political class, she is profoundly a political person, meaning that she recognizes that politics is the existential realm within which a people choose for themselves their social destiny. I think we have to go back to someone like Theodore Roosevelt to see a similar representation of youthfulness, energy, democratic political impulse, and personal connection to the frontier youthfulness of our nation itself. Note that TR ran for president in 1912 while not occupying an elected office. And note the centennial symbolism here--1912 to 2012. She has not left politics; her words state clearly that she intends to use the politics of the democratic polis to wrest democracy from the self-serving death grip of the nation's nearly hereditary political elite. Her impulse is similar to Ronald Reagan's, when he spent four years, out of office, speaking for conservatism before he won election in 1980. Her spirit, her strength, and her courage are inspiring. Let's see what happens next. I think we will see real, meaningful, "hope and change" erupt in our democracy.

Revised. July 6, 2009.