Out in the Cold

Amid Palin-mania, our former governor faces a long political winter.

Dear Mitt Romney:

I feel sorry for you, and for your hair. I truly do. You set it all up so nicely. You were the obvious choice to run with John McCain. You were handsome, wealthy, a governor, and when it came to truckling to The Base, well, not even the nominee groveled lower. Nobody ran against his own record with greater enthusiasm than you did. And then what happens? After dissing governors generally, and you specifically, in debates, McCain picks for himself . . . a governor. And not just any governor, but Sarah Palin, a moose-guttin', wolf-strafin' point guard of a governor who immediately got The Base cheering in tongues so loudly that it drowned out everything else. And it hasn't died down in the weeks since then. I mean, how fair is this? Your state's got more people than hers. (In fact, your state may have more legislators under indictment than hers has people.) You ran the Olympics. She ran a permafrost Peyton Place. Nobody ever punched himself harder in the mouth than you did, and yet, here comes Ilsa, She-Wolf of the Tundra, and suddenly nobody else matters. Even with McCain calling on you to help explain the end of the American economy, Palin's not going away. You know that, right? Maybe you thought, Hey, if Grampa McManymansions craters in November, I've got a shot in four years. I've got some chits to call in with my new friends in the guns 'n' Jesus wing of the party. Well, forget that. They've got themselves a new star, and she's the heiress apparent. Come to think of it, she says she has foreign policy experience because her state's so close to Russia. You live on the planet nearest the moon. In 2012, maybe you should run as an astronaut.