Monday, January 31, 2011

Why Sarah Palin Makes Us Proud: Gumption

February is Sarah Palin Month, and a good time for blogging about this remarkable American. Another good source of regular news for Sarah's supporters is Texans 4 Palin, which I've been reading for a while and added to my blog list on the sidebar.


No one "embraces change" with the legitimacy that Sarah Palin does. Her history is of a woman who makes deliberate decisions that fit the needs of the future.

She is not shackled to yesterday's best plan, she's attentive to new information and is not surprised by the unexpected.

"The next campaign" is not her mindset. She neither runs nor holds office for her ego - she has been a candidate only at those places and times that running for office made sense as a movement toward repairing something broken. Her history proves her integrity: she stays always focused on making things right.

So when, as Ethics Commissioner of the Alaska Oil & Gas Conservation Commission, she found that it was not sufficient to combat unethical behavior within the industry when questionable activities and ethical disinterest were rampant among the Republican party leadership, she did the ethical thing: she first resigned, and announced why. Then she filed good-faith complaints against those who were engaged in shady dealings.

And the minute she determined that the most fixable "brokenness" in the Alaska Governorship was the incessant filing of frivolous complaints against her in effort to push her off of the public stage, she elegantly and simply fixed two problems at once by doing the smart thing.

Just the way the Roadrunner would take a simple step to the right at the very last minute, and watch in bemusement as Wyl E. Coyote jumped right off the cliff.

The political class twittered that her resignation would be the "end of her career". They had no clue what her career was.

It wasn't - and isn't - "being a politician".

The media wanted to censor her, ridicule her, play her for a chump. From the White House Press Corps to JournoList, they bent their ethics to try to keep their "access".

She took a simple step to the right and made a Facebook page. Suddenly even the President was spending time explaining why he wasn't going to take advice from Sarah Palin.

There's access - and there's access.

Sarah Palin has the kind of access every ordinary American is born with. That's why she terrifies the Progressives. She's untouchable, and she is proof the species is not only not extinct, but is alive and thriving. A species of American that thrives without slogans, without marketing campaigns, and without "thought leaders".

A person whose self is whole and inviolable. Who can't be manipulated. Who doesn't seek favor from those who set her up for a fall and who then are angry that she's unaware of their ridicule. And she wouldn't be interested even if she were.

Sarah Palin's interest is not in "Being First Woman President". Her interest is in fixing a broken government. And she will never have to throw her hat into the ring again to do that. I hope she will - but she will only do so when it makes sense from inside her own home and her own head and her own heart as the surest means of fixing the broken stuff she's interested in fixing.

That's real integrity. That's real leadership. That's plain old American gumption.

And that's one reason why Sarah Palin is a Great American.


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Photo: "Sarah in Pink Jacket at Villages Book Signing" from The Sarah Palin Information Blog Photo Gallery

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