Palin v. Nixon: Why you’ll probably have Sarah to kick around for awhile

Last week, Sarah Palin declared her independence from the Alaska Governor’s Office just in time for Independence Day. While the move wasn’t enough to drown out a final news weekend in malaise en route to MJ’s funeral, it did set the politicos abuzz.

Most of the headlines read some paraphrase of: What will Palin do next? After all, she gave no clear reason for her resignation and ended her lakeside speech (she never forgets to add that rural homespun background) with a mysterious sounding quote of General Douglas MacArthur’s, “We are not retreating, we are just changing directions”. Although, we must assume that MacArthur had some vague idea of the new direction he was going in when he made that quote, otherwise they’d probably be speaking a tad more Japanese in the Philippines.

As part of the hypothetical onslaught, some of Palin’s remarks against the press have led many pundits to compare Palin’s dropout to that of Richard Nixon when he gave a quite embittered speech in November of 1962 after losing the California Governor’s race to Pat Brown. Even Nixon’s former aide, Pat Buchanan, made the comparison.

Jonathan Allen (more proof that Jonathans are a mental force to be reckoned with) published a piece chastising Buchanan for the comparison and arguing that Palin could never hold a candle to Nixon as a foreign policy expert or a political strategist. While I agree completely, I don’t think that just because she doesn’t get up to Nixon’s talent level means that she could not make a similar political comeback. She will probably spend the time off earning a significant amount of money through book deals, etc., perhaps even more than Nixon was able to earn during his interim gig as a Manhattan attorney. This could give her an ample purse (hopefully, one she buys for herslf this time) come 2016 or 2020, or if she decides to challenge Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski next year.