Sarah Palin, or wtf? Alaska Edition

I haven't really written much about American politics recently - mostly due to the absence of an upcoming election and the feeling that there are plenty of people out there writing pieces supporting the President and what he's doing, so we really don't need another one (although I admit that I'm writing this wearing my "I heart Barack Obama" t-shirt). However, recent goings on in Alaska are almost impossible to avoid, so, some thoughts about Sarah Palin's resignation:

- A bit eerie that she resigns just after Vanity Fair publishes this piece by Todd Purdum, essentially ripping her apart.

- What really struck me about her speech was just how odd her logic is. She states that she's "not wired to operate under the same old 'politics as usual'", which in the context she defines as how "some governors ... accept ... lame duck status, hit the road, draw the paycheck, and 'milk it'", yet surely the best way of proving you're not a 'typical politician' is to continue doing the job the voters of Alaska voted you in for and govern. Is she saying that if she was a "lame duck" she wouldn't be able to resist all the "typical" travelling and trade missions (not that there seems to be anything wrong with trade missions from where I'm sitting)? That's not a great message as far as her character is concerned. Is she saying that she wouldn't want to run for President for two years and therefore leave Alaskans without their permanent Governor (as early as it is vis a vis 2012)? Then why was she ok with running for VP while keeping her Governorship?

- You stand for governor because you think you're the best suited to govern your state, what does it say if you walk away from it because you know you're not running for re-election? Also, if she ran for and won the presidency, would she then resign from office when she became a lame duck? Leave it all to the VP maybe, like she's done with her Lieutenant Governor.

- There's been lots of talk of reasons for this move, including suggestions that she's getting out of politics altogether. My feeling is that, if the Vanity Fair piece is an accurate reflection of the Palin camp and its approach, this would seem to fit in well with her warped political posturing. I'm almost slightly worried that, somewhere in the bizarro world that is Palin-ville, they think that resigning from office is just the right approach to starting a campaign for president 3 1/2 years before the election.

- Remember that this is a woman who kept a pregnancy secret until she hit her 3rd trimester, and then flew across the country while in labour ie crazy seems to come with the territory.

- This piece on Slate.com makes a lot of sense - it just doesn't seem a good idea to run for the presidency without a firm and current base of authority.

- There might be another scandal brewing, but I'd prefer to think that she was sick of the pressure of being the USA's main line of defense against Vladimir Putin.

- If this is the best the GOP have got, they are even more screwed than previously imagined.