A Hard Choice, But The Right One

Jillian Bandes | July 03, 2009 8:36 PM

I'm disappointed. Doing it right after the Vanity Fair controversy, muddled in investigations, with nary a few months to see her term through -- why bow out now? And I fear the worst: that Palin has a skeleton in the closet, one she doesn't want to come out while she's still in a position of power. Her lack of reasoning during her press conference would provide fodder for that theory.

But I trust her to have done the right thing. I trust her a lot more than I did, say, Mark Sanford, after that first rambling presser. Palin seems more shrewd than that -- she knows what she's doing. She's looking at the cards and isn't just holding out for the river, but instead cashing in her chips when she thinks she should. Maybe it's for her family, or for the integrity of the Alaskan GOP. Maybe its for her future presidential run, or maybe it's just because she's just sick of politics all together. But in any of these situations, staying one more day past July 26 just wasn't going to work out. I'm disappointed at that choice, but I'll give her the benefit of the doubt that it was the right one.