Is Sarah Palin the future of the Republican Party? Our friends over on the right are debating this even as we speak. "At a recent meeting of conservative activists," according to reports, "the very mention of her name set the whole room cheering and the women present all but dancing on the tables." Well, sure: These people are badly disoriented now -- the country just elected a secretly Muslim, terrorist-sympathizing socialist, and all -- and they need something to cheer about. But in the cold light of day, it's going to hit most of them that Palin's vice-presidential run was her own personal Bridge to Nowhere. Here's why.
Running for president means overcoming several hurdles. Let's look at them in order and consider Palin's chances of surmounting each one:
- First, she has to survive in Alaskan politics -- either get re-elected or win a Senate seat. This may not be so easy. She has undoubtedly intensified her following in Alaska, but she's also intensified opposition to her, and she's made herself a big, fat target: Attractive candidates in both parties will be eager to take her on, not only in hopes of riding the backlash against her but because defeating her would instantly get you nationally noticed. And then there are the scandals to which her VP run only drew further attention. What happens when her funny approaches to personnel matters, expense and e-mail accounts, etc., now come under greater scrutiny? Such questions will certainly be on the minds of the people she'll need to surmount the next hurdle:
- To run for president you have to persuade a certain group of people that you're a candidate they want to bet on. These are the various "players" in the nominating process: big donors, party and elected officials who can endorse you or help you win primaries in their states, campaign managers and professional political operatives, opinion-makers (like, in this case, prominent conservative writers and columnists), heads of interest groups affiliated with your party (like, Christian Right leaders), and respected members of the economic and foreign-policy establishments who will lend you credibility by signing on as your consultants. People like these aren't exactly "kingmakers," but they are candidate-makers -- and they want to be kingmakers, that is, they want to bet on the eventual winner so they'll have maximum influence with the next president. Some of them are hard-core ideologues of the kind attracted to Palin, but many aren't -- they're more like investors, or even bookies calculating the odds to put on various racehorses. Even if they're personally enthusiastic about a candidate's views, they'll be careful about making the wrong bet because they're risking their own time, money and credibility.
Now, some who are currently excusing Palin's lack of preparedness compare her to George W. Bush at the time he launched his presidential campaign. It's not a good comparison. To the candidate-makers in the 1990s GOP, Bush was a reassuring figure: the son of a former president they respected, a protege of that president's own political and business brain trusts, and a seemingly likable guy with no real baggage. He seemed willing to be guided by those with more experience, showed no inclination to "go rogue," and had his feet planted in both the business and evangelical wings of the party (with his religious conversion at 40 conveniently excusing what might otherwise have been the scandals of his youth). Palin, by contrast, has already collected lots of baggage, and I don't just mean suitcases full of silk boxer shorts. Indeed she's already divided opinion even among campaign operatives and conservative writers -- which leads us to the next hurdle:
- Supposing you make it past the first two hurdles, still, before you even get to the first caucus, you've got to run a gauntlet of press interviews, Q&A appearances with groups of donors and organizers, and, of course, pre-primary debates and a campaign against other hopefuls within your own party. Is there any evidence that Palin will do well in these settings? Will she have diligently studied the issues and found a way to discuss them fluently? Recall that we still haven't really seen her exposed to criticism from other candidates; the Obama campaign mostly ignored her (on the time-honored theory that VP candidates don't usually matter and, anyway, that she was imploding on her own). What happens when her many contradictions are absurdities are actually highlighted in a campaign? How will she dismiss those criticisms as the ill will of "liberal elites" when they're coming from other Republicans?
Palin is not going to make it past all these hurdles. In fact, the biggest hurdle here is Palin herself. Our conservative friends like to talk about how character is destiny, how people don't typically change. By most reports, not to mention what we can see with our own eyes, Palin is not someone inclined to learn: she's a "diva" who blames others for her failings and who views her public role as a vehicle to carry out personal vendettas or pursue her own enrichment. And when she's caught out in that conduct, she lies about it, planting the seeds for still further problems and scandals. To bet on her for 2012, you'd somehow have to believe that all that's going to be different from here on. In one sense it would be fun to see her nominated so President Obama could chew her to bits. But her future in the GOP, if any, is as an evangelical niche candidate -- Mike Huckabee without the winning personality. At this point, though, she'd be lucky to get even that.