Bad Decision? You Betcha!

It figures that when I have lots of comments to make I have no time to make them.

Ah, good, ol' Sarah Palin. Everybody knows by now she quit her job as Governor of Alaska with 18 months-ish left to go. The excuses have varied even more than the rumors, and they are simply ludicrous:

she wants more time with her family -- because no other governor with children has ever had to really tackle that aspect of the job. And isn't that something you would've considered before you ran for the office?;

she was called by a higher power -- one that obviously trumps the Alaskan people she committed to serve;

she didn't want to be a "lame duck" governor -- something that only happens when you can't run for re-election, which was not the case here. Unless by "lame duck" she meant "useless", in which case, that would probably be true;

the ethics investigation was a "distraction" and "unfair" and "expensive" to the Alaskan people -- never mind that the bulk of the expense has been incurred because she refused to cooperate by even writing a simple letter to clear things up. When you make people dig, you incur costs;

the ethics investigation was costing her too much money and she had to get into the corporate world again -- because starting a "Palin Legal Defense Fund" is a hassle, but joining Twitter puts the "fun" in "fund."

she quit to take a book deal -- because no one in history has every done two things at the same time, like, their job and writing a book that is probably going to be ghost written for you anyway;

she quit to make appearances as a GOP fundraiser -- speculation, but the GOP would be stupid not to use her in this capacity;

she quit to be on FOX News as the female Newt Gingrich -- total commercial appeal, I buy this one;

she was under FBI investigation -- not true, but obviously plausible enough for people to latch onto the idea;

something bigger was coming down the pike in terms of scandal -- ties in with rumors about FBI, but really would anyone be surprised at this point?;

she is having a midlife crisis -- fair enough. I guess some male governors respond to midlife crises by having affairs with Argentinian women they can't shut up about;

she's a maverick -- LOL.

I'm not sure any of this really matters nationally. Her base still loves her, and people who didn't like her in the first place now have new reasons to keep disliking her.

Her resignation is more than just a means of fodder for talking about Palin nationally, though. It should be more about the people of Alaska. It's bad enough for the people of South Carolina that their governor ran away to bonk his mistress on another continent without telling anybody. For what it's worth, I'd consider that a job walk off and fire him like any other hard working American would be fired. But Palin's walking out for over a year. She was contracted to work for four years as a public servant, but she chose to break that contract with the public because she thinks she can better serve them "from the outside" where she cannot force or control legislation in any way. Makes perfect sense to me. She thrust the Lt. Gov. into a role he's not ready for in anticipation that if he wants to keep this job, he'll have to both campaign for it very shortly while still learning on the job.

For a woman who characteristically makes bad judgments, this really isn't surprising. What it shows more than anything else is a misunderstanding of how leadership works. If you're going to be the boss of somebody, part of that involves taking care of that person, too. That means when you hire somebody to do a job, you don't just show him the factory and say, "Well, today's my last day, there she is! Have at it." There's this little thing called "transition" that people need. I was an Assistant Director once. If my boss had walked out, I could've run the place. I knew how it worked. But it would've been on chewing gum and shoe strings. I would have had to learn and interpret her methods in a closer way than just working beside someone allows. I would've probably had to take focus away from certain things to put them toward her main duties. The whole point of having more than one person run things is so you can both do different tasks. Palin seems to be under the impression that it's no problem to just turn the office over to your next in command, that things will be smooth, that he must know exactly what's going on. He won't, and he can't. On top of that, he has to take on a new Lt. Gov. (about which there is already some controversy -- a man who has already resigned, but wait, not really), and that person also has to learn the job from scratch. When you have to learn on the job, people don't get served. The real losers here are Alaskans -- even though they got rid of Alaskan Loser #1.

You can't be a "maverick" if you interpret "maverick" to be "person who does what they want when they want regardless of the collateral damage" and be a "leader" at the same time. But this word redefinition problem she has is persistent. She told one reporter "I quit, but I'm not a quitter." Yes, you are. Quitters are people who quit things, and since you quit your job, you are a quitter. You are a Quitty Poo-Poo-Pants, whether you like it or not.

She really does twitters, by the way. And in her native dialect, doncha know? If you want to follow her for the lols, her twitter address is: AKGovSarahPalin. Um ... is she going to have to change her handle now?

-- DV