By Scott Conroy
Is she or isn't she? Usually it's not difficult to decipher the intentions of prospective presidential candidates.
Although typically coy about their White House ambitions before making their candidacies official, politicians who make frequent visits to early voting states, hire staff nationally, and deliberately keep their names in play leave little doubt that it will only be a matter of time before they declare what was already readily apparent.
But with Sarah Palin, it is another matter altogether.
The enigma surrounding the former Alaska governor's objectives has only grown since she resigned from office in July of 2009. She has taken some of the obvious steps that would signal presidential ambitions while neglecting to pursue others.
On one hand, Palin has continued to speak out frequently on issues facing the country, added a veteran chief of staff to her small team of advisers, and said repeatedly that she is indeed contemplating a presidential run.
On the other hand, Palin has not made any trips this year to the first three voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina, and she and her staff have not reached out to the key Republican operatives and officials who have traditionally held sway over early voting states. Many of them have warned publicly that her lack of early interest figured to become a major road bump to any White House hopes she may harbor.
"History would suggest that's a very risky strategy related to the Iowa caucuses," Iowa GOP chairman Matthew Strawn said of Palin's lack of travel to the first caucus state, which could be a near must-win contest if she were to enter the race. "The one thing that Iowans don't want to be is taken for granted."
Since the midterm elections, conventional wisdom in Washington has steadily coalesced around a collective belief that Palin is no longer interested in running for president in 2012. She has recognized the extent to which her dismal early-state polling numbers would make her candidacy dead on arrival, this line of thinking goes, and if she were to enter the race and then fall short of the Republican nomination, Palin's still-bright star would surely dim.
This inside-the-Beltway logic typically holds that Palin must be content in her lucrative roles as a Fox News contributor, public speaker for hire, and overall big-name brand in a media environment that rewards her brand of political provocation with fame and fortune. And she especially is believed to like the fortune part.
Running an underdog presidential campaign would likely be a backbreaking slog and do nothing for her bank balance.
But assumptions that she is all but certain to rule out a presidential bid ignore several factors: Sarah Palin has never done things the traditional way; she built her career on challenging political powerbrokers rather than courting them; and she has long demonstrated an uncanny self-confidence and grand ambitions for her own life that have confounded critics at every turn.
"She does not follow the typical playbook," Alaska Republican pollster Dave Dittman said. "Both the RNC and the DNC have a playbook, which is for the most part pretty predictable. And she's just writing a whole new book."
Dittman recalled that when Palin was deciding whether to run for governor in 2005, many Alaska Republicans correctly pegged her as a rising star but were unconvinced that she could win a primary contest to unseat incumbent GOP Governor Frank Murkowski. Although the odds were stacked against the relatively unknown former Mayor of Wasilla, and the party establishment voices were many and vocal in their discouragement, Palin ignored them.
"There were other people who'd announced they were going to run, and people were saying to her, ‘Why don't you run for lieutenant governor,' because that was the predictable thing-that she'd run behind John Binkley, who was a known individual," Dittman said. "And her response was, ‘Why doesn't he run for lieutenant governor?'"
Her decision to take on a veteran incumbent from her own party was emblematic of a natural aversion to Republican machinery - and following normal conventions -- that Palin has demonstrated throughout her career.
From her whistleblowing of ethical lapses committed by Alaska Republican Party chairman Randy Ruedrich before her gubernatorial run to her frequent battles with members of her own party in the Alaska state legislature and beyond, Palin has relished opportunities to take on the GOP powers-that-be. And time and again she has exceeded her critics' expectations as she has embraced seemingly every chance she has gotten to grow her star power.
While conversations about Palin with longtime Republican stalwarts in Iowa and New Hampshire nearly always lead to expressions of bewilderment over her apparent lack of interest in building the most basic relationships, lesser-known tea party-aligned figures in both states have told RCP that they have indeed had contact with those in Palin's political sphere. If Palin were to decide to launch a presidential run, it would likely be these more obscure grassroots operatives, rather than the big-name consultants, on whom she would rely.
While Palin's long record of presiding over turmoil among her aides may make staffing an effective presidential campaign more difficult, her passionate following among diehard supporters who treat her almost as if she were a member of their own families is a unique asset in American politics and one that Palin could utilize to help her mount the kind of intensity-driven campaign that helped propel her to power in Alaska.
As the weather warms and the first scheduled Republican primary debates rapidly approach, Palin's every move continues to be viewed through the presidential prism. When it was announced that she would visit India to make a paid speech, for instance, skeptics cited it as a telling sign that she was more interested in making money in New Delhi than she was in making friends in New Hampshire.
But when Palin added to her foreign trip a stop in Israel-a country that has become a must-visit destination for GOP presidential prospects-supporters who want her to run deemed it a clear sign that she was indeed looking to enter the race.
And what does the unpredictable potential candidate say for herself on this mystifying matter? Actually, she gave a reply when asked on Fox News that makes a lot of sense. She's seeing how the field shapes up before making her final decision.
"Because it is so monumental and so affecting on a family," Palin said, "I probably would wait to see who is willing to put their name forward in the hat, in terms of serving this country."
