Palintology

She quit while I was in Europe the week before last, so I wasn't able (or interested enough) to catch the full flavor of the event on video. Drat. I love politics at this level, part blood sport, part the art of the outrageous spin.

The Palintologists in today's NY Times gave us fairly detailed reporting on how the resignation came to pass, but without much insight about the why. Too bad. We'll have to piece this story together from a variety of other media sources. What I learned so far was sobering but not surprising.

When she started her career on the national stage, I thought that she was a potent and dangerous force for our politics--and I still do. The politics of resentment in our history have elevated more than one man to Chief Exec of the USA.

You don't have to be more than a couple of questions deep to go far in politics (witness Reagan and W), so a well briefed, poised, and poison-mouthed Palin could land some very damaging punches in 2012. Long time to go, of course, and imbeciles have a way of imploding long before they are loaded onto missiles and launched.

In the meantime, we have another national figure to put the fun back into disfunctional.