This year has been a banner year for Sarah Palin — if her goal was to become rich and famous.
The cash comes courtesy of a break-out reality show, “Sarah Palin’s Alaska” (just try to turn it off), a best-selling book, a TV news gig, and a stage-mother cameo on “Dancing with the Stars.”
No wonder that for the third time in as many years, the Alaskan dynamo made it onto Barbara Walters‘ list of the year’s most fascinating people.
But if Palin wants to be not just rich and famous, but also president of the United States, 2010 might turn out to be the year of missed opportunity — a year when she should have stuck it out and served her full term as Alaska governor.
Such persistence away from the high-definition network cameras, the air-brush makeup sessions and the wardrobe stylists would have given the novice governor time to hone her policy credentials and enjoy a nice ride running one of the few states in the union that actually prospered in 2010.
Had she not quit in July 2009, Palin’s term as governor would be coming to an end right now. Leaving her almost two full years to revamp the Caribou Barbie routine for those of us in the lower 48.
Rather than start 2012 with a bad case of Palin fatigue, millions of Americans would have had time to become reacquainted with saucy Sarah, and on second blush might have liked what they saw, a governor that performed well for her state during the worst economy since the Great Depression.
Since her departure from Juneau, Alaska’s finances have improved markedly, helped by an auspicious rise in the price of Alaska’s biggest export — oil.
Meantime, the economy there is growing faster than the national average, and unemployment in the state remains below 8 percent, another convenient talking point on the road to the White House.
A four-year record of economic success in Alaska would have mitigated many of the doubts about her competency on the economy.
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