While her qualifications and abilities may be questionable, Sarah Palin's decision to resign as governor of Alaska is entirely consistent with a serious intent to seek the Republican presidential nomination in 2012.
Although George W. Bush and Bill Clinton were notable exceptions, under the present system for choosing candidates, it is very difficult for a sitting state governor to win a presidential nomination. It is indeed no surprise that the major party candidates in 2008 were both United States senators. For that matter, most of the primary candidates were senators and not governors. Yet, historically, many of the most capable presidents have been governors rather than senators. Unlike senators, governors have administrative and management experience. Both Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt were governors of New York before becoming president. Ronald Reagan had been governor of California and Woodrow Wilson was governor of New Jersey.
The challenge facing 21st century governors is that they do not have the time to mount the multi-year campaigns to raise funds and develop organisations that can compete in nearly 50 state primaries and caucuses. Senators, being members of a legislative body, do not have the same day-to-day responsibilities and time commitments. Until the late 1960s, primaries were not nearly as common as they are now and governors were not at a significant disadvantage. But this changed very dramatically by 1968.
Having been defeated for the California governorship in 1962, Richard Nixon had been pretty well relegated to the dustbin of US politics. Yet in 1966, he tirelessly campaigned for congressional candidates and claimed credit for the notable Republican gains that year. While the credit was not justified virtually all the gains were simply the retaking of safe Republican seats lost in the 1964 Lyndon B. Johnson landslide over Barry Goldwater Nixon was recognised as the consummate Republican while his far more popular and capable adversary, New York governor Nelson Rockefeller, was embroiled in his own difficult re-election campaign. Throughout 1967 and 1968, Nixon was free to campaign while Rockefeller, newly re-elected, and Reagan, newly elected, had very demanding positions that did not permit full-time campaigning.
Rockefeller eventually realised the difficulty of running a modern presidential campaign and resigned as governor in 1973 to allow a full three years to be ready for the 1976 election, when he assumed Nixon would be retiring.
Unfortunately, Watergate and Nixon's resignation intervened and disturbed this scheme. When Reagan was elected president in 1980, he had not been governor of California for six years.
While even mentioning Sarah Palin on the same page as Rockefeller or Reagan is ridiculous, she does share the situation of being a sitting governor. Furthermore she has the compounding difficulty of being governor of a remote state that lacks the media access of New York or California. She also faces the risks of a re-election campaign before the 2012 presidential election. By leaving the state house now, she can relocate to the lower 48 states and not have to worry as Rockefeller did about the impact of a possible intervening electoral loss. Palin has a strong following and would certainly be welcome by some of the cable networks one in particular comes to mind. This would be a far superior forum to launch a campaign than the state house in Juneau. She will also have the luxury of campaigning for Republicans in 2010 when the party could very well have some mid-term gains in Congress.
Don't sell her short, she's playing it by the book and she couldn't have had better teachers than the former governors of New York and California. After all, if Nixon could rise from the ashes and win the White House, why not Sarah Palin?
Harry Melkonian is an American constitutional lawyer and senior lecturer at the United States Studies Centre, University of Sydney.
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