The Outsider: Where Is Sarah Palin Going Next?

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Suppose that Palin somehow channels this grim and possibly gathering sense that America's institutions and authorities are no longer worthy of deference. Suppose that the Obama Administration's expansions of government don't prove as popular — or successful — as Democrats hope. Maybe then she will have picked the right time to declare in her resignation speech, "I've never believed that I, nor anyone else, needs a title" to be effective. In fact, a title might slow you down if your message is that our nation's leaders are so deeply and abidingly inadequate that the only appropriate attitude toward them is scorn.

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If not her, maybe someone else. For now, having surrendered her official position, Palin is free to give speeches, write a book and watch for the fish to arrive. A person learns in the Alaska vastness that humans can respond to events but never control them.

The Outsider
Palin's breakneck trajectory from rising star to former officeholder — with more twists sure to come — has everything to do with her Alaskan context. As the writer John McPhee once observed, "Alaska is a foreign country," a statement legally false but true in terms of culture and attitude and location. Recall how the story begins. It is June 2007, and a ship docks at the remote port of Juneau, a place tightly bound between sea and mountains. Down the gangplank walks a pair of pundits — Barnes and editor William Kristol — bound for lunch with an unknown first-year governor. A few hours later, the two reboard their cruise ship, delighted to have found a Republican fresh as a glacier breeze, seemingly tough as a sled dog and unsullied by the internecine battles raging within the fracturing GOP. (Read "TIME's Interview with Sarah Palin: 'It's All for Alaska.' ")

But how tough could she really be, having learned about politics in a state with almost as many square miles as people? Alaskan feuds are straightforward and personal, against a backdrop of "live and let live." Washington combat has an impersonal cruelty to it, reflected in a maxim of the strategist Lee Atwater: "Never kick a man when he's up." As Barnes and Kristol began feeding Palin's name into the swirl of Washington gossip known as the Great Mentioner, they might have overestimated how ready she was for battle in the big time.

In Dillingham, Palin traces her decision to resign directly to Aug. 29, 2008, the day she was announced as McCain's running mate, the day "the distractions," as she calls them, "ramped up." They ranged from the bizarre — a blogger's campaign to prove that Palin faked her last pregnancy (she didn't) — to the humiliating. The National Enquirer sent four reporters to Alaska, hoovering up gossip about drug use by her older children and long-ago marital infidelity. Despite rave reviews for her Republican National Convention speech, Palin soon became the target of late-night comics and snarky columnists. The obvious pleasure she took in her attacks on the Democrats made it hard to feel sorry for her.

A more experienced, more familiar politician would have been ready for the ramping, but Palin seemed consumed by it. Instead of ignoring hostile bloggers, she combed the Web for their latest postings. At the same time, she assumed the classic role of vice presidential attack dog, making insinuations about Barack Obama's religion and patriotism. She urged the McCain campaign to strike back at every heckler, and when staffers admonished her to remember the big picture, she suspected that she was surrounded by enemies. An armor of suspicion closed her in. Asked recently to name the people Palin trusts for advice, a source close to her answered, "Nobody. I'm not even sure she listens to Todd." (Read "How Sarah Palin Mastered Politics.")

The campaign ended but not the barrage. Since the election in November, Palin has been hit with at least 10 ethics complaints for such alleged offenses as allowing her picture to be used to promote Alaskan fisheries and wearing a logo on her snowmobile gear. One complaint was filed under a pseudonym borrowed from a British soap opera. Most were quickly dismissed. And yet, Palin says, she arrived at the conclusion that there would always be more and that the complaints would consume her remaining time as governor.

"It comes at such great cost," she tells TIME. "The distraction. The waste of time and money, public's time and money." She decided that "it's insane to continue down this road. And Alaskans who have paid attention to what's going on, they understand that." But what she sees as distractions, many voters see as the gauntlet of public life; that if you can't take the heat, don't go into the public sauna. She asserts that if people were shocked by her decision, it was because the media haven't covered the real story. "We have sat down with reporters, showed them proof of the frivolity, the wastefulness, you know, millions of dollars this is costing our state to fight frivolous charges. And countless, countless hours from my staff, our Department of Law, from me, every single day, just trying to set the record straight — and it doesn't cost the adversaries a dime."

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