Leadership Vacuum

Dear Citizens of Alaska,

It's all sunshine down here in the great State of California, and I really should be outside harvesting backyard tomatoes right now. Instead, I find myself again drawn to the circus that surrounds your governor, Sarah Palin. It's like rubber-necking at a car accident. You don't really want to look, but it's hard to avert your eyes.

Exactly how do you respond when your governor, a person who acted as if she really wanted the job, ups and quits on you? If she had a really good reason -- like a cancer diagnosis, for example -- you'd undoubtedly wish her the best and turn to someone else for state leadership. But how do you cope when your top state official delivers a rambling exit speech that falls short of any credible explanation and relies on both a dead fish metaphor and a "pass the ball" analogy.

Appearing to sense that these images, compelling as they were, might not be enough to sell you on her premature departure, she closed the speech by playing the mommy card. Mrs. Palin, citing her children's wishes that she spend time in their house instead of the statehouse, even quoted one of her offspring as offering a resounding, "Hell, yeah!" to the idea that Mom throw in the governor's towel. It's unclear if the hell-referencer was Bristol, Willow, Piper, soldier Track, or baby Trig. We'll find out eventually, though, as Mrs. Palin has promised to elaborate later on her family's team meeting, presumably because she thinks we actually care about this stuff.

And maybe we do. Self-absorbed governors give us headlines, water-cooler gossip, and potential jokes for many late-night talk show hosts. They help us to forget the dreadful economy, the over-heated planet, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Citizens of Alaska, I'm writing to you today because we, in California, feel your pain. We, too, have a wacky governor with an outsized ego. And, yes, we only have ourselves to blame. We duly elected him. In fact, we wanted him so badly that we recalled his predecessor, Gray Davis, who was a hard-working bureaucrat, because, as his name foretold, he was guilty of being a shade too gray for our vibrant state. Now the dysfunctional California government is sputtering along on IOUs. But at least our Arnold has stayed on the job and not flaked out on us, as your Sarah has done.

Maybe the task of governing one of these United States is just not that much fun, which seems to be Mrs. Palin's primary talking point. As best as one can tell from her speech, she appears to be quiting because the ethics complaints, the jibes at her family, and the other minutiae are making it too hot in the statehouse kitchen, so to speak. She's not the only governor to flame out, of course. Think Eliot Spitzer, Jim McGreevey, and now Mark Sanford. These fellows all had libido issues to contend with, but a resignation is still a resignation, extra-marital affair or not.

The long-term problem for Mrs. Palin is that nobody likes a quitter, which is precisely what she is. How her recent actions will play in Peoria remains to be seen. At the moment, while her national political future hangs in the balance, Sarah Barracuda, the Wasilla basketball star, has gone home to write her memoir.

Tell me, Alaskans, do you think this book will sell in your state, or are you just too mad at her? Personally, I'll wait for the paperback edition, or maybe the library copy -- if any neighborhood libraries are still operating by the time the Palin memoir is released. It's unlikely that California's local enonomies will function for very long on state-issued IOUs. Upon reflection, perhaps you Alaskans aren't in such bad shape afterall. Our state, too, might be better off if the Govinator termed out a little prematurely.

Mr. Schwarzenegger, isn't that your agent calling? Truth is, given your box-office appeal, you might just boost the state's economy more by taking on a leading role in a new Terminator flic (people love those) than by continuing your leading role in the state capitol. Just an idea.