Defying the Way

Say what you will about Sarah Palin (or about her children, if you prefer the lights of SNL), but savor her modest contribution to breaking the business-of-politics daze in Washington and at CNN, if only mild and fleeting. In DC you spend your career working up the ladder, rung by rung, quid pro quo after quo, and then someone who doesn't know how it works fixes to take the #2 spot. Katie Couric and others reassured themselves that Hillary-style personality-consuming calculations have their merit, and unorthodox Palin could not have her cake and eat it too.

So credit Palin for characteristically declining Wolf Blitzer's political schemas last Sunday. First, Wolf had been reading off questions from Obama voters. That's how it works. Don't question it.

PALIN: As you're reading these viewers' questions, got any questions from anybody who voted for McCain?
BLITZER: I think we do but we're going to get to that.
PALIN: Oh good! OK!

He never got to it.

Later Wolf tried to get her to play the hide-your-ambition game, obligatory in Washington, where most play but few win. Palin didn't play.

BLITZER: You're not ruling out a run in 2012 for president of the United States, are you?
PALIN: Not ruling that out but there again, that is based on my philosophy that it's crazy to close a door before you know what's even open in front of you...

It would be so easy to rule it out, then say in 2011 "times have changed. I'm running." Some would say you have to lie, that's how it works kid. And thus Obama in 2006 with Tim Russert:

RUSSERT: So you will not run for president or vice president in 2008?
OBAMA: I will not.

So let us give Palin a stilted cheer or two for keeping her soul off the shelves.