SHE'S NO NIXON:

Palin's speech had shades of Nixon, circa '62 (Andrew Malcolm and Johanna Neuman, July 5, 2009, LA Times)

The announcement by Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin that she was bowing out of Alaska politics on the eve of the Fourth of July left a lot of people scratching their heads. Palin's friends report that she is genuinely sick of the attacks that seem to be part of the fabric of national politics these days.

But Palin's hastily announced news conference also had all the earmarks of Richard Nixon's famous concession speech in 1962, after he lost the campaign for California governor to Democrat Pat Brown. Nixon's rant was also a last-minute affair. Reporters had been told that Nixon -- a former congressman and senator who served as Dwight D. Eisenhower's vice president from 1952 to 1960 and lost the 1960 presidential race to John F. Kennedy -- would not be making a public appearance.

Instead, Nixon surprised even his staff by taking the microphone and, at the end of a rambling, 16-minute discourse on national and state politics, he dramatically left the stage:

"I leave you gentleman now and you will write it. You will interpret it. That's your right. But as I leave you I want you to know -- just think how much you're going to be missing. You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference, and it will be one in which I have welcomed the opportunity to test wits with you."

Except that Richard Nixon had just suffered two extremely disappointing losses, whereas Ms Palin is walking away from the job people elected her to do before finishing even one term. Meld that with her attendance at six different colleges and her opponents can easily impose a narrative regarding her lack of stick-to-it-iveness, even unreliability or instability.

MORE:
Palin’s Jackpot: Why did Alaska’s ambitious governor ditch a lame-duck $125,000 job? Between a $4 million book deal, speeches, and a possible TV gig, The Daily Beast’s Duff McDonald calculates up to 20 million reasons a year. (Duff McDonald, 7/07/09, Daily Beast)

Lost in the debate over why Sarah Palin resigned—whether she’s tired of it all or because she’s a Machiavellian genius—is the most American of ideas: This woman is poised to turn her fame into some cold, hard cash.

She’s already got a book deal, agents in both New York and Los Angeles are scrambling to line up some sort of talk show for her, and you can bet if the journalism major-turned-governor decides to write a column, that thing would practically syndicate itself.

What does the brand of Palin Inc. stand to make in the next year? More than most liberals would care to know.

Posted by Orrin Judd at July 7, 2009 6:44 AM