Borderland

I heard from Alice Mercer, recently, curious about Sarah Palin. Here’s what I think: Sarah Palin decided to ditch the actual responsibilities of governor to become a community organizer.

Accountability, we all know, is inconvenient, and Sarah finally figured that out. She’s been griping that ethics complaints are using up all her time, and costing the state millions of dollars, but many of us see it otherwise. I’d file an ethics complaint myself for the liberties she takes with the truth except that lying is normal for politicians.

I read somewhere that she may have raised more money for Barack Obama than she did for McCain last fall. That resonated with me since I did give a few bucks to the Democrats for the first time in my life after hearing her talk at the Republican convention. If anyone had asked me about Sarah Palin a year ago, I’d have said that she’s our governor; so what? She was unremarkable. After her performance last fall, though, I felt the best thing we could do was to keep her tucked out of sight here in Alaska, but that is not going to happen, apparently.

The best thing about her national celebrity, for me, was discovering some Alaska blogs that have filled the gaps left by other media coverage. My two favorites are The Mudflats and Progressive Alaska. For anyone who wants the longer version of Sarah Palin, with all her melodramatic twists and turns, I recommend starting there.

Philip Munger at PA linked to an op-ed by Michael Carey, who writes for the Anchorage Daily News:

A former legislator wondered: “Maybe she is leaving because she got a better offer.” There’s speculation about whether she’s gotten herself a contract as a conservative television commentator, for instance.

But the “why” of why she left may be as simple as this: She couldn’t take it anymore. The scrutiny, the criticism, the mockery, and yes, the hard work of being governor. Palin’s thin skin is legendary. She never ignores a slight. For most of the last year, she has been feuding with the Alaska media and many of the state’s political leaders.

She has almost no support among legislators, even Republicans. And she haphazardly applies herself to the labor of government at a distance — some critics call her the BlackBerry governor.

Philip’s post also features an interview Carey did with Terry Gross on NPR that is worth listening to. Carey gives a pretty even-handed account, I think. The gist of his assessment of her significance for Alaska is that she will become a historical asterisk. She’s someone else’s problem now.

Meanwhile, she’s left us with a constitutional knot to untangle and some bills to pay.