The Resurrection of Sarah Palin

"god help you if you are an ugly girl
course too pretty is also your doom
cause everyone harbors a secret hatred
for the prettiest girl in the room
and god help you if you are a phoenix
and you dare to rise up from the ash
a thousand eyes will smolder with jealousy
while you are just flying back"
- "32 Flavors," Ani DiFranco

Sarah Palin wants you to know it's not her fault.

Likely spurred on by the repugnant post-campaign chatter to the contrary, the former GOP Vice Presidential candidate has instinctively, and smartly, started a one-woman reconnaissance mission, declaring that she is not a down-home diva and ignoramus, nor the reason for the McCain-Palin ticket's loss. And while some in the media continue to lap up the drama, perplexed by Palin's decision to do something other than retreat to Alaska with her pit bull tail between her legs, I can't help but smile at her savvy.

Surely, this time out, she lacked the couth and global curiosity required of candidates for national office. That notwithstanding, Palin's potentially fatal blunder came not during her campaign for the Vice Presidency, but before it. When asked to be a Vice Presidential candidate, she should have said 'no.' She was not ready to campaign or govern on a national level and she should have known it. So, frankly, should have those who cunningly and cynically selected her to provide a boost to McCain's campaign - which, let's be fair, her selection did, in fact, provide. They got what anyone with eyes that work should have expected: a dangerous mix of ambitious hubris and a stunningly sheltered naivity that has derailed politicians seemingly far more talented than she (Richard Nixon, John Edwards, Bill Clinton, et al).

But, they also got something else, something they couldn't have expected, something that clearly inspired the jealousy and hatred that led to their decision to try to blame and defame her before the campaign was even over: a phoenix resolute in her plan to rise up from the ash.

One week out from the election, McCain staffers cried foul, saying Palin was "going rogue," had "left the reservation," was "campaigning for 2012," and "going off-message." What they knew, and were responding to, was that the man at the top of their ticket, despite his considerable knowledge and experience, was being left in the dust of his own making by someone far less knowledgeable and experienced, because she had a skill he did not, one that is vital for political survival: instinct.

Palin has been a greater presence post-election not simply because she's free from the protections of a campaign that mistrusted her, but also because she knows instinctively that she must be. The impression of Palin that would linger and calcify in a post-election absence, is one she cannot politically afford. She knows she must remain a presence on the national stage, disallowing her future to become inexorably linked to McCain's dreadful, antiquated, losing campaign. And let's be clear: It was McCain's campaign. And the loss was not Palin's fault. Palin can, and should try to, survive it. And, may her God bless her, that's exactly what she's doing. In the political game of "Survivor," she's proving she has the instinct to outwit, outplay and outlast.

Now that she's had a taste of national politics, her international curiosity and involvements can grow. She can learn that which she doesn't know, without losing the aw-shucks-ness that so endeared her to those for whom such curiousity will not grow. She can be a national presence as governor, honing her instincts and tailoring her ambitions to be better paced with her knowledge and experience. Rather than wait for the next door to open unexpectedly, she can wait outside the door of her choosing and walk through it not as a former Vice Presidential candidate and perceived albatross, but as the Governor Palin and soaring phoenix she is savvily showing herself capable of becoming.

She will, of course, continue to be vilified by those still sifting through the Arizona senator's and GOP's ashes. But that, perhaps more than anything else, is all the proof she needs that she has risen.

It will take years to know if she will become the Republicans' savior, but today there should be no doubt: the resurrection of Sarah Palin has begun.

Where the Clouds are Far Behind

Dorothy: Oh will you help me? Can you help me?

Glinda, the Good Witch of the North: You don't need to be helped any longer. You've always had the power to go back to Kansas.

Dorothy: I have?

The Scarecrow: Then why didn't you tell her before?

Glinda, the Good Witch of the North: Because she wouldn't have believed me. She had to learn it for herself.

In a 1967 speech delivered at Riverside Church in New York City, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. told an American population increasingly distressed by the Vietnam war, to "move past indecision to action." It was time, King argued, to accept that "tomorrow is today," and that "there is such a thing as being too late." It was this speech, during which King told listeners that they were being "confronted with the fierce urgency of now," that Barack Obama offered up as explanation for why he entered the presidential race as a neophyte senator. Told time and time again that he was too young and inexperienced, he'd have other chances to become president, it was Clinton's year, and that the nation might not be ready to embrace an African-American candidate for its highest office, Obama did not waver. Instead, he argued that while one may arrive too early for some, such is far better than arriving too late for many.

Tomorrow is election day. Tomorrow is today. We are again confronted with the fierce urgency of now. And, should we not move past indecision and into action, by electing Barack Obama the next President of the United States, we will be too late - too late to salvage our international credibility as Earth's last best hope, too late to turn the tide of division that threatens to culturally fracture us once and for all and, worst of all, too late to realize we've had the power to go back (or forward) within us all along.

The oughts of the twenty-first century, and the 2008 election cycle it understandably spawned, have provided more than their fair share of reasons for outrage to those paying attention and more than was fair of the sort of hapless leadership that left the led feeling helpless. Beginning with the curse of the butterfly ballot eight years ago, our nation slid into disrepute at an alarming rate, with most of us too numb for too long to even realize the great power that still lay within us. No one can ever-again convincingly argue that votes don't matter. Even those who voted for Bush (twice) would acknowledge that our world is radically different than it would otherwise have been had a few thousand votes in Florida and/or Ohio gone differently. And, yes, even some of them might agree with me that it is radically worse.

Tomorrow provides an opportunity to transform ourselves and our world. And all such transformation requires of us is the courage of the American patriot willing to trade life for liberty, the heart of the American abolitionist willing to lead others from the darkness, and the brains of the American inventor willing to conceive the inconceivable, achieving the seemingly unachievable.

I did not enter, or exit, the Democratic primaries supporting Barack Obama. And, though, my hardcore liberal Democrat ideology would never have allowed me a vote for anyone other than the Democratic nominee in the general election, whomever he or she turned out to be, I am, for the first time, going to vote for a presidential candidate in whom I believe. Obama has the thoughtfulness, the incisiveness and the steadiness that defines great leadership. He knew something years ago I willingly admit I did not: there is such a thing as being too late, and he is and always was, the perfect leader for these imperfect times.

I will be proud of my country when he's elected president tomorrow (when, not if - I am no longer a doubter). I will be proud of myself for casting a vote in his support. And, more, I will be proud of the campaign he ran, the foresight he displayed and the future he will help us deliver to ourselves.

Obama hasn't told us anything we didn't already know or were apt to disbelieve - about our troubles, our missteps, or our need, or capacity, for change. Despite ignorant claims to the contrary, he hasn't stepped forward as some chosen "one," puffed up by an arrogant belief that only he can lead us through these harrowing times, traversing the difficult journey from today to tomorrow. Rather, he's watched, with great care, as we've taken this journey for ourselves - a journey wherein we've learned that, once we so chose, we didn't need to be helped at all.

Change. Hope. Progress. America. These are not places or possessions, not things for which we need go in search; they are neither outside nor beyond us. They are within us. And they have been, all along.

Tomorrow, we will return home - certainly not a place where there isn't any trouble, but ours nonetheless - and show the world what we've learned.