Will Sarah Palin Run For President?

I don't think so, in fact I can't imagine it on any level, but two writers that I admire, Andrew Sullivan and Geoffrey Dunn, both think she will, which is why I'm thinking about it today. Does she even want to be president? I assume that every politician in America occasionally fantasizes about flying around on Air Force One and hearing Hail To The Chief every time they walk into a room, but the reality of running for president is so daunting that most of us would break out in hives just considering the possibility. Running for president is really, really hard work, and there is nothing in Sarah Palin's background that would indicate she has any interest in working that hard, much less that she could succeed at it.

For starters, consider the process by which she became the Republican nominee for Vice President in 2008. On Sunday, August 24, 2008, Palin was at the Alaska State Fair when John McCain called her on her cell phone and asked if she was interested. When she said yes, the campaign sent her a long questionnaire that they were asking all of their potential running mates to complete. On Wednesday they secretly flew her from Alaska to Arizona. That afternoon and evening she met with Steve Schmidt and Mark Salter, two officials from the McCain campaign, and talked by phone with a Washington D.C. lawyer named Art Culvahouse, who was in charge of vetting VP candidates. On Thursday morning she met with Senator McCain for an hour or two as well as a short meeting with Cindy McCain. By lunchtime Thursday, Sen. McCain had offered her the job.

Five days, from the initial phone call to the job offer. During that time she didn't have to raise any money. She didn't have to recruit, hire, train and manage a national campaign staff. She didn't have to talk to any newspaper editorial boards, trying to convince them to endorse her. There were no negative stories about her in the newspapers, much less nasty stuff written in blogs. Nobody was running negative campaign ads against her. She didn't have to answer questions from reporters and she didn't have to debate her opponents.

Contrast that with the process of running for President. She would have to raise over $500 million dollars, then decide how best to spend it. She would have to lead a campaign organization of hundreds of paid staff and thousands of volunteers, at both the national and state levels. She would have to be able to articulate a coherent message and not just in ghost-written messages on Facebook. She would have to take questions from reporters and she would have to participate in debates - and her one meet-up with Joe Biden would feel like a cakewalk compared to trying to hold her own with her fellow Republican candidates during the primaries.

Take a good hard look at Sarah Palin's professional and political history up to this point. There is absolutely nothing to indicate that she has the brains, the experience, the temperament or the work ethic to successfully run for president. So Andrew and Geoffrey can relax. It's not going to happen.