If White House is goal, Palin takes risk

But if some of her supporters are correct in surmising what she is doing - turning full time to preparing herself for a presidential campaign in 2012 - it represents a huge gamble, even by the standards of a politician whose short career has been shaped by huge gambles.

For some Republicans, the comparison that came to mind was Richard M. Nixon, when he announced in 1962 that he was leaving politics for good after losing the governor’s race in California, two years after a failed White House bid.

In fact, Nixon used the next four years to quietly refurbish his image, building ties with the conservative wing that was becoming ascendant in the Republican Party, ingratiating himself with Republican senators and candidates for governor by campaigning on their behalf, and becoming better schooled in issues.

Assuming her departure does reflect a strategic decision to prepare for a presidential campaign - Republicans have been wondering why she dropped out so abruptly - Palin may be looking to the next few years to do what Nixon did to prepare for his successful run for the White House in 1968.

Yet Palin is in a different place than was Nixon - or any other politician who has gone the rehabilitation route. She is viewed disparagingly by many of the elites in her party, no matter how many conservative Republicans have flocked to her. She has grown increasingly unpopular in her own state and nationally; 43 percent of respondents in a CNN Poll in May viewed her unfavorably, compared with 21 percent when Senator John McCain of Arizona chose her as his running mate last August.

And unlike Nixon, Palin’s credentials to serve as vice president - much less president - are a weak point. Nixon had been a vice president, senator, and member of Congress, while Palin is in her first term as governor of Alaska. By stepping down before finishing her term, she cannot claim to be even a one-term governor. Without a positive record of accomplishment as governor, Palin may find she has little to run on as she seeks to achieve a critical political goal: expanding her appeal beyond the conservative voters who crowd her rallies and write checks on her behalf.

“I think a lot of it has been unfair, but, fair or unfair, there has been a question in the eyes of most Republican primary voters about whether she has demonstrated an ability to govern,’’ said Sara Taylor, who was the White House political director under President George W. Bush. “So the best opportunity you have to demonstrate you can lead is to do it, and you can’t lead if you don’t have a platform.

“So I do think that this is a mistake if she wants to run for office,’’ Taylor said. “It’s a brilliant move if she wants to go make money, write books, and give speeches, and I don’t think anybody could fault her for that.’’

“But,’’ she added, “she has potentially made it a lot harder for herself if she wants higher office.’’

If one of Palin’s goals was to erase the perception of her as flighty - a perception encouraged by some McCain lieutenants in the rough aftermath of the failed campaign - it certainly could not have helped to have a staged an out-of-the-blue announcement that shocked even her closest aides and whose theatrics probably tempted Tina Fey and the “Saturday Night Live’’ production crew to abandon their vacations and head to the studio.

“I can’t imagine that anyone saw this coming,’’ said former state senator Kim Elton, a Democrat who is now director of Alaska affairs for the secretary of the federal Department of Interior. “I think the consensus in Alaska was she had her eye on the prize and that the way to get that was being governor.’’

And if Palin’s goal is, as she suggested, to put an end to the rush of what she described as hectoring investigations from the news media, the sheer frenzy of the reaction to her decision was a reminder of how difficult that might prove to be.

Jonah Goldberg, an editor at large at the conservative National Review Online, posted an open letter to Palin even before she announced her decision, urging her to use the time before the 2012 race to fill in what he said were deficiencies in her knowledge that had hampered her as a vice presidential candidate.

“So here’s my advice,’’ Goldberg wrote. “Stay home and do your job and your homework. You’ll still be a national figure come the primaries. But if you can’t surprise your detractors with your grasp of policy when you reemerge on the national stage, you won’t win the nomination.’’

Yet the dominant reaction of Republicans has been befuddlement. Her move may play well with her strongest supporters, but her political instincts and stability were once again being questioned in other circles of the party, which had already been wary of her after last year’s election.