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UPDATE JULY 5! Roger Kimball asks in his “Sarah Palin, a modern Cincinnatus?” here - -”Is there life ‘outside government’? Is it possible that anyone in his right mind who had the chance of being a Governor/Congressman/Senator/President of the United States would choose not to be? That’s precisely the possibility that punditocracy and all those strategists,GOP and otherwise,just cannot wrap their minds around. Maybe they’ve heard of Cincinnatus. Deep down, though, they do not see how anyone could willingly relinquish political power.” 

Steyn: Sarah Palin and the “Emirs of Incumbistan”

Today we are celebrating our national anniversary and freedoms during tumultuous and searing national controversies. 

Many of our conservative brethren are disheartened or puzzled by governor Sarah Palin’s decision to resign the governorship of Alaska, and some, like Ellen Sauerbrey, see the decision as part of a progression to higher office. 

In our view, however, too many in the conservative punditocracy still don’t grasp how deeply Mrs. Palin touched the hearts of the grassroots.

But — as always in difficult times — Mark Steyn gives us a healthy perspective on the governor’s decision in his “Cutting Bait” here.  (Maybe his perspective remains sound because he is comfortable living in rural New Hampshire.) - -

“With respect to many of the Palinologists below, I think they’re getting way too hepatomantic [link added by Forum]over the entrails. As a political move for anything other than the 2010 Senate race, today’s announcement is a disaster. And I’m not sure it’s a plus for the Senate - and, even if it were, the manner and timing suggest it was not a professionally planned event and therefore is unlikely to have any grand strategy behind it.

So Occam’s Razor leaves us with: Who needs this?

In states far from the national spotlight, politics still attracts normal people. You’re a mayor or a state senator or even the governor, but you lead a normal life. The local media are tough on you, but they know you, they live where you live, they’re tough on the real you, not on some caricature cooked up by a malign alliance of late-night comics who’d never heard of you a week earlier and media grandees supposedly on your own side who pronounce you a ‘cancer’.

Then suddenly you get the call from Washington. You know it’ll mean Secret Service, and speechwriters, and minders vetting your wardrobe. But nobody said it would mean a mainstream network comedy host doing statutory rape gags about your 14-year old daughter. You’ve got a special-needs kid and a son in Iraq and a daughter who’s given you your first grandchild in less than ideal circumstances. That would be enough for most of us. But the special-needs kid and the daughter and most everyone else you love are a national joke, and the PC enforcers are entirely cool with it.

Most of those who sneer at Sarah Palin have no desire to live her life. But why not try to - what’s the word? - ‘empathize’? If you like Wasilla and hunting and snowmachining and moose stew and politics, is the last worth giving up everything else in the hopes that one day David Letterman and Maureen Dowd might decide Trig and Bristol and the rest are sufficiently non-risible to enable you to prosper in their world? And, putting aside the odds, would you really like to be the person you’d have to turn into under that scenario?

National office will dwindle down to the unhealthily singleminded (Clinton, Obama), the timeserving emirs of Incumbistan (Biden, McCain) and dynastic heirs (Bush). Our loss.”

Remember what the many “emirs of Incumbistan” contributed to inflicting on us last week. The crazy “logic” – and the shameless greed — behind the Waxman-Markey bill.

Americans have faced tougher July 4th’s. With our affluence and advantages compared to earlier times, we should be able cheerfully to stand fast and to find effective ways of securing our traditional freedoms!

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