Slate is not exactly friendly to conservatives, but I think this guy's advice is spot-on, so I've restrained myself to one minor bit of snark.
. . . as her former running mate would say, the fundamentals of Sarah Palin are strong. Her conservative detractors—Colin Powell, David Brooks, and Christopher Buckley among them—were put off not by her personality but rather by Moreover, those who called Palin an embarrassment fail to consider the alternatives. If McCain had picked Mitt Romney, the narrative would have been how much they hated each other;
(Well, that and the fact that Romney's a good guy but he's about as exciting as semi-gloss interior latex.)
Tim Pawlenty, and crowds would have remained in the low hundreds.
(Again, a good guy, but not a thriller.)
"If we picked [Joe] Lieberman, that convention would have been a disaster," says McCain spokesman and blogger Michael Goldfarb.
(It would have, shall we say, failed to engage the base.)
Once these alternate-reality scenarios become clear, aides say, Palin's candidacy will look better.
And anyhow, four years is plenty of time. Remember that Palin had all of two days' notice (if that) about her nomination, and less than a month to prepare for her first debate. Even the best politicians have trouble shifting gears that fast. "Take John McCain and put him into the last 60 days of a governor's race in Alaska," says Republican strategist Stuart Stevens. "He wouldn't know the nuances of the North Slope vs. the suburbs of Anchorage."
From that perspective, Palin's unpreparedness wasn't her fault—if she really thought she was ready to be commander in chief, she could have run in the primaries. (Then again, she accepted McCain's offer.) Over the next four years, though, she'll have plenty of time to bone up on Russo-Georgian relations, missile defense, and her least favorite Supreme Court decisions.
But the best thing Palin can do is go home and get back to work. Stevens calls it the Hillary Clinton model: Take a big personality, dial it back, and roll up your sleeves. That means tackling Alaska-specific issues—see through to completion the pipeline she has been championing; fix the ailing state budget; and introduce other energy initiatives. Some suggest she might run for Senate once Republican Lisa Murkowski's term is up in 2010, or in a special election if Ted Stevens gets booted from the Senate in 2009. But she's probably better off running for re-election as governor in 2010, says Stuart Stevens (no relation to Ted). "If she's a wildly successful governor, she can claim credit for what she does, instead of being one of 100."
None of this will happen in a vacuum. Over the next four years, Palin will get more national scrutiny than any Alaska governor ever has. (She's already received more invitations to appear on SNL than any sitting governor.) Her best strategy may be to ignore it all and focus on the mundane, essential, and below-freezing details of her home state.
McCain (Charlie Brown) reached across the aisle and got Obama's (Lucy) assurance he would use public campaign matching funds.