Reporters and TV news producers, please pay close attention to this: Sarah Palin is not running for president this year. You can stop following her around.
If Palin's presidential chances were not completely dashed the day she resigned the office of governor, any talk of her as a realistic candidate should have ended when TLC announced she would star in a reality show. Yet for some reason the political press continues to treat her as a contender. Journalists chased her bus tour up the East Coast and waited breathlessly for Alaska to release her gubernatorial emails. Many are now speculating over some “rivalry” with Michele Bachmann to stoke the rumors. But this is all in vain, because she will not run.
Let's consider the evidence. Remember back in March, when Fox News suspended a couple of its commentators until they decided whether they were running for president? Who was suspended? Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum, both of whom were on the stage at St. Anselm College on Monday night. What notable commentators weren't suspended? Mike Huckabee, who announced his decision not to run on his Fox News show during Sweeps Week, and Sarah Palin. Before the “One Nation” bus tour, Fox announced it would not be changing the status of Palin's contract, and she used that contract as an excuse to decline interviews with anyone other than Greta van Sustren.
Roger Ailes is many things, but an idiot is not one of them. He knows that he could be breaking campaign finance laws and flaunting journalistic ethics by paying candidates to appear on his network this close to the campaign season. He surely had Fox News executives pull each potential candidate aside to ask them to declare their intentions. Gingrich and Santorum must have expressed an interest, Huckabee and Palin must not have.
So what's Palin doing? Well, it's not hard to imagine that she enjoys being famous. It seems that she wants to continue her TV career, either on Fox or with another reality show. By herself, Palin isn't especially interesting (one commentator has already called Bachmann “the smart version of Palin,” which isn't especially kind considering the ), so she has to make herself interesting. The longer she can draw out the questions of whether she will run, the longer she will be an active part of the news cycle.
If I may speculate for a moment, I would suggest that Palin likes the politics side of politics, but isn't a big fan of the governing side. Politics is fun: traveling the country, giving speeches, and saying whatever it takes to get your name in the news. Governing is harder; it takes planning, compromise and composure, three areas Palin has proven herself less than adept. Palin won't run, and won't announce that she's not running, because as long as it's a mystery, she can have fun pretending to campaign without the possibility of having to do the hard work of governing afterward. Plus, if she does run and loses, it might finally pushes her out of the spotlight all together.