Whither Sarah Palin? (update/repost)

Taken all in all, I incline to think that John McCain’s loss this past Tuesday will prove a boon to Gov. Palin’s political career. To be sure, the folks who ran the McCain campaign are trying pretty hard to pin his loss on her, as a way of shifting the blame off themselves—but I don’t think anyone’s buying it; indeed, from the reactions I’ve seen so far, the only people they’re hurting are themselves. Throw in the interesting and quite plausible suggestion from Matt Lewis that this isn’t about 2008 at all, but rather is an attempt at a pre-emptive strike for 2012 by a potential competitor, and there just doesn’t seem to be any reason to take these criticisms seriously. As long as Gov. Palin keeps staying above the fray, she should come through unscathed by her ticket’s defeat.That’s a good thing, because a victory might well have done harm to her future career prospects. The odds are pretty good that things are only going to get worse over the next few years, and that the GOP’s current minority will prove to be a blessing in disguise; of course, for that to prove out, change will need to come to the party, but Gov. Palin is now in an unfettered position to help bring that change—which she would not have been as VP. As such, given that her geographical obscurity has been wiped out by two months in the national spotlight and that she now has a deep and strong base of support in the national GOP, she’s in a stronger political position going back to Juneau than she would have had in Washington, D. C.That still leaves the question, what next?At this point, Gov. Palin would have to be regarded as the frontrunner for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012, but a lot of things can happen in four years; if she just rests on her laurels, she’ll see others pass her by. She needs to take her position as a leader in (if not formally of) the national party and use it, both to strengthen her own position and to advance the GOP cause. To do this, of course, she needs to keep herself out there as a national politician. The usual way to do this is to run for the Senate, but in her case, that probably isn’t the best option.She could, of course; at this point, it looks like Ted Stevens has won re-election despite his conviction, which almost certainly will mean either his resignation or his expulsion by the Senate to serve his sentence. This will trigger a special election to fill his seat, and Gov. Palin could run—and some people are already urging her to do so. The benefit to that would be that if she runs, she’ll win, which will give her a safe seat through the next presidential election cycle; if she doesn’t, that gives the Left two years to hammer her and try to bring her down before her term as governor is up in 2010. The question is, would this be a good opportunity? Sen. Stevens earned a rock-solid seat by bringing home large quantities of pork, on which the state of Alaska is largely dependent, given how much of the state is owned by the feds. Gov. Palin has done a fair bit in her time in office to reduce that dependence, but there’s a lot more work to do in that regard; for her to run for the Pork King’s seat on a pledge not to seek pork and to keep that pledge could put her in a very difficult political position down the line—and for her to do anything else would ruin her nationally.Alternatively, Gov. Palin could wait until 2010 and challenge Sen. Lisa Murkowski in the Republican primary; if she did so, however, she would be running for that seat not in order to serve in the Senate, but to run for the Senate simply in order to facilitate a presidential run that would begin shortly after she took her seat would be the worst sort of politics, and it seems hard to believe that Alaskans would go along with it. What’s more, such a tacky move would only damage her standing and reputation.Given that, it seems that Gov. Palin will need to work by other means to keep herself on the national stage. There are several ways by which she can do this. One, as Adam Brickley notes, is to do her job as Governor of Alaska, and in particular to do everything possible to expedite the building of the natural-gas pipeline. This, combined with intelligent national advocacy of drilling in ANWR, will serve to strengthen the country both domestically and in its international position, to strengthen the identification of the national GOP with domestic energy production and energy independence, and also to help her maintain a high national profile as a conservative reformer who gets things done.Another thought Adam had, which hadn’t occurred to me, would be for Gov. Palin to establish a PAC and do fundraising for national Republican candidates for 2010. By doing this, she could give the congressional GOP a real boost two years from now, as well as building support and loyalty among other leaders in the party. Even better, along with sending them money, she could spend time campaigning for Republican candidates across the country, using her own formidable political skills directly to boost their chances. Given that she will be a marked woman for the national Democratic Party in 2010, it might even be better for her not to seek re-election, but to take the time she would need to spend campaigning for herself and invest it instead in other Republican candidates (including, of course, Sean Parnell or whoever would be the GOP candidate to replace her in Juneau). Of course, if she did so, she would need to find another job, but I’ll come back to that in a minute.Before addressing that point, it should also be said that Gov. Palin would do well to work to win over conservative skeptics like Charles Krauthammer, Kathleen Parker, George Will, David Brooks, and Christopher Buckley—not because their opinions are particularly important, but because impressing those who ought to be her supporters and currently aren’t is the most direct way to establish herself as the true standard-bearer of the Republican Party. The best way to do this is to address the current lack of a strong conservative identity in the national party, strengthening it and bringing it back to its roots, and to do so in a way which also dispells the easy caricature of her as an intellectual lightweight. Therefore, as one who framed the troubling challenge presented by Iran with the question “what would Reagan do?” I would suggest (as would Jim Geraghty) that Gov. Palin should ask herself the same question, and do what Gov. Reagan did in the 1970s:

Reagan . . . [spent] years in the 1970s mulling the great issues of the day, reading voraciously, and presenting detailed commentaries on everything from the SALT and Law of the Sea treaties to revultions in Sub-Saharan Africa to the future of Medicare. Then and only then, finally, after 16 years on the national stage, did the GOP give Ronald Reagan its nomination and present him as its candidate for the presidency.

Obviously, she’s still going to have her day job, at least through 2010; but in and around that, and raising her kids, I believe Gov. Palin should devote as much time as she can to studying and writing on the great issues of our own day. Keep building her governing experience dealing with the challenges of Juneau—and as much as possible, take advantage of that to use Alaska as a “laboratory of democracy” on issues like health care—but engage intellectually as well with the challenges of Iran and Pakistan, Social Security and judicial philosophy, the future of NATO and how to deal with a resurgent Russia, practical approaches to changing the system in D.C., and what our stance ought to be toward China. Co-author pieces with leading conservative intellectuals—maybe an article on judicial nominations with Antonin Scalia, to throw out one wild idea. Help rebuild the conservative intellectual treasury that was squandered by the GOP during its time in power. And off these articles (and perhaps books), I’d like to see her give speeches under the auspices of the Hoover Institute, the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, the Ethics and Public Policy Foundation, the Institute for Religion and Public Life, and other such organizations. If she does decide not to seek re-election at the end of her term, she could go to work for an organization like AEI, or perhaps in the national party leadership structure, and use that as a platform to continue developing and arguing for her conservative agenda.In short, I believe Gov. Palin should keep her name out there, not just by doing political things (though she should certainly continue as she has begun in Alaska), but by using both her position and her gifts to articulate, develop and defend conservative political philosophy and its applications. In so doing, if over the next four years voters become accustomed to seeing her name and picture appear along with insightful, well-argued, thought-provoking pieces in places like The Atlantic, the Wall Street Journal, conservative opinion magazines such as National Review, the Weekly Standard, and The American Spectator, websites like RealClearPolitics, and perhaps even on occasion in the MSM if they allow it—including, on topics which make it possible, illustrations from her own achievements in Alaska—then she’ll maintain her public profile but in a way that gives the lie to those who’ve tried to dismiss her; and along the way, she’ll reinvigorate American conservatism in much the same way as Ronald Reagan did, and help the GOP along in the necessary task of taking stock and getting back to being the party it needs to be. Two birds, one stone—and an entirely fitting task for one who would be her party’s leader, to start by leading it back to its soul.