The Woman Who Would Not Be President

The recent spate of prospective presidential candidates dropping out of the Republican race and the lack of a true social conservative in the contest has led to rampant speculation of the return of everyone's favorite maverick: former governor Sarah Palin. Several other factors have led some to hope that she may be getting ready to run for the Republican nomination in 2012, but I wouldn't count her in just yet. Most of what we know about Palin points to the inescapable fact that she no longer wants to run for president.

(A fake but hilarious picture of Palin, from NewsPirates)

Since the day after the 2008 election, many observers have been waiting for Palin to announce her bid in the 2012 election; her prominence in 2009 and during the 2010 midterm elections only furthered the belief that she would do so. Nevertheless, recently most signs have pointed away from a Palin candidacy.

Let's start by looking at why people think she's going to run. First of all, former governor Mike Huckabee's decision not to run helped Palin. Huckabee has been the champion of social conservatives since his upset Iowa victory in 2008, and his departure left this core group without a candidate. Palin would be the most high-profile alternative over lesser-known names like Congresswoman Michele Bachmann or former senator Rick Santorum. Indeed, a recent Gallup poll shows that Palin's support has increased since Huckabee took himself out of the running, a good sign for her.

Secondly, Palin recently said on FOX News that she has the “fire in [her] belly” necessary to run for office, separating her from the likes of Huckabee and Governors Mitch Daniels and Haley Barbour, who dropped out because they could not work up the desire to go through the presidential grind.

Finally, in the “only vaguely evidence of anything” category, there is a pro-Palin documentary being released this week in Iowa, which will soon make its way through the early primary states. Some have taken this as a sign that she is ready to reintroduce herself to voters and try to win them over.

Sorry to any Palin diehards, but that's some pretty sketchy evidence of a presidential campaign in the works. The reasons why she won't run are much more convincing. First and most importantly, she has made no attempts to build the foundation of a campaign. Even candidates who aren't sure if they're going to run have campaign staffs and fundraising machines working behind the scenes, just in case they decide to jump in; Palin has neither of these and no ground operation to speak of. She has previously argued that her name recognition in the early states means that she doesn't need to have an organization set up in advance, but there's no way that she would seriously leave that to chance.

(Palin on The O'Reilly Factor, from the Christian Science Monitor)

Secondly, Palin is still a paid employee of FOX News. She has been working as a commentator for about a year now and FOX said today that “We are not changing Sarah Palin's status” with the organization. Taking into account that FOX terminated its relationships with former Speaker Newt Gingrich and Santorum when they even started to think about running for president, it would appear that if Palin is planning to run, she's kept it a secret from her bosses.

According to the Wall Street Journal, a “confidant” of Palin's said that in spite of her recent stirrings, she is unlikely to run. Aside from the evidence, the best reason for her not to run would be that, let's be honest, running for president is really hard and takes a ton of money and effort. And while some would argue otherwise, Sarah Palin is not a stupid woman, nor one who doesn't understand politics. Her unfavorable ratings are over 50%, and not much lower even within her own party. Translation: the numbers say she can't win, and she knows it. To run would likely be a very costly and difficult fool's errand, and I don't think that she wants to go through that.

Why all the teasing, then? Because Palin is quite content to control a news cycle, instead of a country. In a great blog post, the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza calls Palin a “celebritician,” a hybrid of a celebrity and a politician. Palin seems perfectly happy being famous, not in power, as evidenced by filming a reality TV show instead of being governor of Alaska. Every time Palin seems to fade from the public eye, she says something newsworthy and, like clockwork, is on the front page of CNN.com again. At the end of the day, Palin appears happy to simply cultivate her own image and play kingmaker in the Republican Party, using her own popularity with the GOP base to support her favored candidates. She may not be positioning herself to run for anything, but she is ensuring that she will be in the news for a long time, and will never have any shortage of speaking opportunities or other easy sources of income. It seems that Palin doesn't really want to be president that badly; she just wants to be famous, and making people think that she's running is an easy way to achieve that goal.

So, it looks like we won't have Sarah Palin to kick around next year. But don't lose hope, Palin fans: I could be wrong and Palin could be bucking all past political trends, actually hoping to jump in with no prior campaign structure. After all, only dead fish go with the flow.