On Sarah Palin's Annoucement

By now, I am sure you have heard the news, and if you would like volumes of analysis, other bloggers have put it together- I'd start with The Anchoress. But my favorite take on on Republican Governor Sarah Palin's resignation announcement is from Mark Steyn over at the Corner at National Review:

So Occam's Razor leaves us with: Who needs this?

In states far from the national spotlight, politics still attracts normal people. You're a mayor or a state senator or even the governor, but you lead a normal life. The local media are tough on you, but they know you, they live where you live, they're tough on the real you, not on some caricature cooked up by a malign alliance of late-night comics who'd never heard of you a week earlier and media grandees supposedly on your own side who pronounce you a "cancer."

Then suddenly you get the call from Washington. You know it'll mean Secret Service, and speechwriters, and minders vetting your wardrobe. But nobody said it would mean a mainstream network comedy host doing statutory rape gags about your 14-year old daughter. You've got a special-needs kid and a son in Iraq and a daughter who's given you your first grandchild in less than ideal circumstances. That would be enough for most of us. But the special-needs kid and the daughter and most everyone else you love are a national joke, and the PC enforcers are entirely cool with it.

Most of those who sneer at Sarah Palin have no desire to live her life. But why not try to — what's the word? — "empathize"? If you like Wasilla and hunting and snowmachining and moose stew and politics, is the last worth giving up everything else in the hopes that one day David Letterman and Maureen Dowd might decide Trig and Bristol and the rest are sufficiently non-risible to enable you to prosper in their world? And, putting aside the odds, would you really like to be the person you'd have to turn into under that scenario?

National office will dwindle down to the unhealthily singleminded (Clinton, Obama), the timeserving emirs of Incumbistan (Biden, McCain), and dynastic heirs (Bush). Our loss.

Think about it- if you were to be called to serve your community or state, and then the media and the liberal lawyers and other politicians turned on you and your family as viciously as they have on Palin, and you were spending most of your time defending yourself rather than doing your job, and no matter how good a job you still managed to do the savage attacks only continued, how long would you last?

Is it a bad thing that Palin is a normal person? Is it something to deride her about- that she choose her family and state over her political career? Is it something to mock, that she cares and feels? A lot of you in your hearts are upset because you want her to be The One- but we already have a One, and it isn't Obama, it is God, and people really shouldn't think of themselves or pretend to be The One because that's not a good path in life.

Sarah Palin might have ended her political career, and she might not have, but it is her decision, and we should all respect it. Romney/Palin 2012.