Kleins From the Right and the Left Say Palin's Out

Carol at Alarming News believes Palin's political career is over, and writes, "What (Palin) had, more than anything else, was a toughness and a dedication to her position. She blew all that with her announcement today."

This is exactly right. It may not be fair, but to succeed, a female politician has to come off 10 times tougher than any man -- "Iron Lady" Margaret Thatcher being the most obvious example. One of the things that Palin had going for her was that she was, as Cindy McCain described her during the Republican National Convention, a "hockey-mommin' ... basketball shootin' ... moose huntin' ... fly-fishin' ... pistol-packing ... mother of five." She had been nicknamed "Sarah Barracuda," and took on the "good ole' boys" who controlled Alaska politics.

However, to all but her most loyal supporters, today's bizarre press conference made her look brittle -- like a person who couldn't take the heat and was buckling in the face of attacks. Today's move is perfectly understandable if she wants to give up politics and protect her family from the blistering assaults of the media and her political opponents. Maybe this news -- odd within the political realm -- actually makes her a pretty normal person by real world standards. But normal people do not get elected president.

From Ezra Klein at the Washington Post:

The main thing I'd point out about Sarah Palin's dazzlingly incoherent farewell is that it's pretty clear she wrote it herself. The proof is in the punctuation. The transcript was posted to her official Web site earlier today. The style is closer to a high schooler's angry diary entry than to an official speech. I've read a lot of speech transcripts. They tend to have fewer words in all capital letters. And fewer things in quotation marks that aren't actually, you know, quotes. And I've never seen an official speech transcript, written by an actual speechwriter, that contains this:

*((Gotta put First Things First))*

And that's not even getting into the self-pitying shots at the press, the fact that she mocked those who take "the quitter's way out" in a speech dedicated to quitting, or this agonizing sports metaphor.......this looks like the impulsive decision of an impulsive politician. It doesn't exactly scream president-in-waiting.