Personally, I think the talking heads, pundits, and even members of her own conservative base are a little to quick to write off Sarah Palin. "Quitter" they call her. I understand the concern but I think Sarah Palin will outsmart them all.
What will the intelligentsia in the press say when Sarah Palin is the host of a new prime-time TV show on FOX every night? or even once a week, for that matter? What will their response be if she shows up next to Newt Gingrich and announces a new national drive to coalesce conservatives across the America?
Maybe I am wrong, but I am willing to go out on a limb here and predict that come the fall of this year, Sarah Palin will be front page news in a way no one imagined.
My good friend Matt May, a brilliant writer, has submitted an essay which I present here in its entirety. He says it better than I ever could.
Alaskan Wilderness
by Matt May
In his book Study of History, Arnold Toynbee described a phenomenon running through the ages: public figures withdrawing from their posts only to return stronger and more able. Toynbee called this a “disengagement and temporary withdrawal of the creative personality from his social milieu and his subsequent return to the same milieu transfigured in a newer capacity with newer powers.”
Toynbee cited illustrative examples such as Thucydides, Confucius, and Peter the Great. Winston Churchill and Charles de Gaulle also returned from the shadows to lead their nations in times of peril.
Sarah Palin’s resignation as governor of Alaska does not, of course, put her on course to be regarded alongside such titans of history. But her exit from the governorship is an opportunity of great magnitude. Those who see it otherwise ignore history and underestimate the thirst among patriots for office-holders able to wean themselves of titles, financial enrichment, and addiction to power in whatever forms it takes.
As she explained in her announcement, her time in office since last August has not only proven to be a distraction given the left’s ceaseless quest to turn up something – anything – on her, but it is costing the state money. Recognizing the uselessness of remaining in a bullheaded quest to desperately hold political power, she is leaving so that Alaskans might return to the business of Alaska.
Yes, she is leaving for herself as well. What of it? There is no brighter star in the Republican galaxy, mainly because she displays more testicular fortitude than all but a handful of Republicans. Who would you rather invite to speak to your organization about constitutional governance and fiscal responsibility in our current climate? Michael Steele? Ed Gillespie? John McCain? Why shouldn’t she be given the chance to assume the role of leader of the resistance that these and so many others squandered?
At this moment, there is only one individual identified as a Republican who can galvanize Constitutional Conservatives, and that person is Sarah Palin. This is not a deficiency. She is the only one capable of calling our president what he is. In this era of Republicans marching only a beat or two behind Democrats, she is one of a few in office able to get a grasp of the concept of not spending what you do not have. Unfortunately Mitch Daniels does not heat up the screen and Mark Sanford is presumably too busy playing eeny-meeny-miney-moe with his wife and mistress. Palin’s appeal – so confounding to so many self-styled savants – is rooted in her being the precise antithesis of nearly every elected official in the republic.
Come July 27, Sarah Palin is free. She is free to follow the example of Churchill, de Gaulle and, to a lesser extent, Ronald Reagan, who each in his own way utilized his time in the political wilderness to reflect, write, and study. She is free to begin commenting on public affairs on television, a syndicated column, or both. She is free to beat the media at its own game, she being more popular than Katie Couric and her ilk could ever dream of being. She is free to take immediate action against whoever dares to ape Todd Purdham in the next edition of Teen Beat for Boomers.
Palin recognizes the time is now. Like de Gaulle, however, she will move forward on her own terms. De Gaulle left in 1946 when he became so disillusioned by the French government that he found no choice but to exit. As Richard Nixon recalls in his book In The Arena, de Gaulle “called a meeting of his Cabinet, announced his decision to resign his office as President, strode abruptly out of the room and into retirement. He had a sense of destiny and did not want to be the President of France simply for the sake of being President.”
While not even close to as dramatic, Palin’s resignation and the myriad reasons behind it strike many of the same chords – the same chords that resonate with millions of Americans. Time will tell if Sarah Palin’s disengagement from elected office will lead to the assumption of greater power and influence. Perhaps she will make some money selling books, making a well-paid speech now and then before vanishing like a comet.
Yet she seems to have the feeling many of us do; America’s destiny is being altered terribly by the dilettante from Chicago and the braying jackals in Congress. Time is of the essence. If she one day returns from her self-imposed exile to lead a successful conservative renaissance, Sarah Palin will be in very good company.
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