The 'Godmother': Part III

"Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in," said Michael Corleone in Godfather III, glowering. That's a perfect description of my mood today.

Sarah Palin, it seems, has announced a multi-state bus tour to promote -- well, I'm not sure what. Anyway, this event surely means she's running for president, right? Wrong -- but the media, the pundits and countless political observers are filling the air waves and the blogosphere with mindless speculation like giddy kids in a feather-flying pillow fight. Crikey, here we go again.

Here's Larry Sabato (an eminent presidential historian) writing for the New York Times today:

"Sarah Palin can’t be underestimated; she could still grab the nomination since no one else has taken off. A lot would depend on whether, a year from now, Republicans see President Obama as ripe for the picking. If Obama can be beaten, then the G.O.P. may turn a bit cautious and try to choose someone who can capture swing voters. That isn’t Ms. Palin’s profile. In trial heats she fairly consistently loses to President Obama by the widest margin of all the better known G.O.P. candidates. Yet if the economy is much better and the president looks to be romping to a second term, Republicans may just go with their hearts and not their heads. They’ve done it before, with Barry Goldwater in 1964. The G.O.P. was wild about Goldwater, who garnered 38 percent and lost to President Lyndon Johnson in one of the biggest landslides in history."

Well, the Goldwater connection is at least a novel twist.

Yes, yes -- the economy could nose-dive between now and November 2012. Pigs might evolve wings and we could be invaded by aliens, too. However, none of these scenarios are even remotely likely. It's hard to knock off a popular sitting president, especially a historic one with enough raw charisma to power the national electrical grid. Election 2012 is Obama's to lose. Period. Full Stop. Unlike the rapture for Goldwater in 1964, the entire GOP is not "wild" about Palin. Most of it, like most of America, thinks Palin is certifiably nuts. Goldwater (a five-term US senator) was an extremist in some policy matters, but he wasn't crazy. That's just one crucial difference, as Professor Sabato well knows. Repeating history, this time with Palin at the top of the ticket, would be knowingly suicidal. That wasn't a foregone conclusion in 1964 when Goldwater ran against LBJ. Republicans have learned a thing or two since then. The notion that the GOP will just hand the election to Mr. Obama is plainly ridiculous.

Are we really doomed to have these pointless debates about Palin all summer long? That's a rhetorical question, of course. Think of Don Corleone as a proxy for the punditocracy. Just before giving him absolution in Godfather III, Cardinal Lamberto summed it up about right: "Your sins are terrible. It is just that you suffer. Your life could be redeemed, but I know you don't believe that. You will not change."