Speculation that Sarah Palin will run for president is like candy to the media. And Palin likes it that way. But I don’t think she’ll run, and here’s the reason why.
Before President Barack Obama could address a Washington, D.C., swelled with revelers and in-the-moment seekers, the pandemonium of the day, he faced much smaller crowds in Iowa, places with more ponderous settings. As a correspondent for my family’s newspaper, The Daily Times Herald, I saw a lot of this campaign close-up.
Twice during his successful Iowa caucuses run President Barack Obama appeared in my hometown of Carroll, once at the Carroll Recreation Center just after Labor Day 2007, and a second time the day after Christmas that year at Carroll High School as the early January caucuses loomed.
His campaign went to smaller towns. Obama hit Denison early in the Iowa effort and Audubon on the Saturday after Thanksgiving – the latter a late-night appearance capping off a marathon day of campaigning. Michelle Obama spoke at Crossroads Bistro the Sunday before the Iowa caucuses.
Obama was in this part of Iowa so often that, shortly before the Iowa caucuses, The Washington Post noted that our newspaper, The Daily Times Herald, “has a level of access to Sen. Barack Obama that any major media reporter would covet.” We interviewed the would-be president six times.
Carroll County voted for Obama in the Iowa caucuses and then again in November, making the town one of the more western pockets of support in Iowa for the Illinois Democrat. After supporting President George W. Bush in the last two elections, Carroll County went to Obama in November 51% to 47% — or 5,284 to 4,905. That was only slightly under the 54% Obama won in all of Iowa.
That’s what it takes to win the Iowa caucuses. A similar effort is needed to win the New Hampshire primaries. Try not giving the local papers multiple interviews and see what happens to your poll ratings. Try going around Iowa day after day after day for a year or more without answering the people’s questions or giving them thoughtful and responsive ideas to solve their problems. Try substituting all the chicken dinners with county chairmen with tweets and neologistic Facebook updates. Try blowing off all the debates because you can’t handle the heat.
Does anyone seriously think that Palin would work that hard? Or that she could get away with running an Angle/Paul media campaign, where she holds press conferences but doesn’t answer any questions, or she refuses to speak to the bigfoot reporters from the network news and the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post? Do you think she’d do 19 debates, like Obama and Clinton did? Even if she did, do you think she’d still be viable after the first two were over?
Once you start thinking about what it takes, there is no way to envision Sarah Palin running a successful presidential campaign.
Not against a veteran like Mitt Romney, anyway, and not against the best campaigner the world has ever seen, Barack Obama. Maybe she could do well in a Super Tuesday-type event, where none of the candidates can embrace all the power brokers and the people, but she’d have to get to that point.
If she doesn’t know it already, once someone sits her down and explains what her schedule would be like and what she’d be expected to do, she’ll take a pass. Even she isn’t stupid enough to think she’s up to it.