Palin's incoherence

Dahlia Lithwick nails it:

"When America is finally ready to reckon with the phenomenon that was Sarah Palin, I suspect we will discover that whatever she represents actually had less to do with her gender, class, or ideology than we now believe. It's easy to look at the soon-to-be-former governor of Alaska as an iconic feminist, a path-breaking working mother, or noble rabble-rousing populist. But when the dust settles, the lesson may be that she was simply a woman who made no sense...

"(T)he strangest part of the Sarah Palin saga will always be her loathing of the media. She never failed to remind us that she didn't like being 'filtered.' She only wanted to talk directly to us, her listeners. Yet the reason Sarah Palin continues to have any kind of political force at all in this country is because of the media 'filter.'  The media helped refine and define her Dada statements and arguments into something that briefly sounded like a coherent worldview."

Ezra Klein adds this note:

"(Palin) only matters as long as the media continues to give her a lot more coverage than it gives other Republican governors with similar ambitions and less checkered records. Palin hurt McCain in the election and collapsed after she returned to Alaska. Her story is not profound. It is a farce. The politician who loathes, but is completely dependent upon, the media. If Sarah Palin didn't exist, Christopher Buckley would have to invent her."

Comments

[Jamie]

Palin's resignation is possibly partly to avoid further legal problems, but probably mostly to pursue money-making in the form of books and speaking engagements. She knows that the VP pick was some unlikely providence and her 15 minutes are ticking down. After her ridiculous performance in 2008 she has no future in politics so she is cashing out ASAP. She was never really a politician, in the sense that her appeal has nothing to do with anything specific she has ever said or done in relation to policy. A very small sliver of social conservatives agree with her actual policies and of course many Republicans would vote for her over just about any Democrat out of party loyalty, but you could say the same thing about any living person who is put on a ballot. She doesn't even have a presence of gravitas or seriousness that some people get by on. Her appeal is more like a celebrity that people are interested in her for a variety of reasons that are not necessaritly positive, but can still be engrossing and so profitable for media. Her real fraw is that she is an attractive train wreck. The Katie Couric interview is a perfect example. I watched clips of that over and over so, from an advertiser's perspective it was sucessful. She is like Paris Hilton, another media figure with no discernable ability other than a profound understanding of the truism, "any publicity is good publicity".