Count Josh Marshall among the throngs of liberals who are agape at the idea that Republicans would want to run a presidential candidate like Sarah Palin in 2012.  After the disasterous campaign of John McCain - much of whose demise was either accellerated by or fueled by Sarah Palin’s presence at the second bannana position - many of us would have thought her career ended at this point.  At least, we certainly wouldn’t have expected to hear from her on the presidential level.  But for many reasons, I find her potential nomination to be - if in concept while not necessarily in practice - to be an entirely predictable one.  And for many reasons, I think that nomination is doomed as well.

Beginning with the most basic and short-term of reasons, Republicans lost the election.  Now is not the time for rational thought or effective planning.  Now is the time when we usually find ourselves clinging to the silliest of spars in the sea; to whit, Sarah Palin.  I recall insisting that Al Gore and John Kerry would have made great presidents, even though I’d spent most of those two Presidential election seasons with a knot in my stomach because I really didn’t believe it.  What the reality of the situation is does not matter.  To what extent either of my two emotions towards the Dem tickets was justified is not germane to the discussion: what matters here is the contradiction that comes when you’re licking your wounds and wishing things were different.

But beyond that, there is a larger truth of Republican politics that cannot be ignored: the Republican power structure adores pretty, ineffectual figureheads in executive positions.  From Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush (and notably skipping over George the Elder), what Republicans really want for a president is someone who looks good and evokes love from the general public to take center stage.  They can then fill the void left by a basically clueless figurehead with lots of people behind the scenes whom the public rarely if ever gets to meet.  Here in Rochester, I would in many ways count Maggie Brooks among the popular figureheads of Republican power politics.

What an irony it is that a party so committed to the “rugged individual” should want someone so entirely dependent on his subordinates to be their leader, but there it is.  It’s an irony that the people who claim to be inspired by Ayn Rand - those who seem to lust after a Howard Roark to sweep them off their feet - so rarely reflect that in the way they operate.

And there is no better proof of the rule than the exception in this case - George Herbert Walker Bush.  In the Reagan Administration, whilst the leader stood at the podium and told reporters jokes, it was GHWB who did all the heavy lifting of that presidency.  This is particularly true of foreign policy.  After all, he was the former CIA director who knew where all the bodies were buried.  And when the Berlin Wall fell and the Cold War (nominally) ended, it was George the Elder who either directly negotiated or directed negotiation that led to whatever US involvement there was.

But when George became the President of the United States of America, the Republican power base just kind of looked the other way.  Every foible and folly of the Reagan Era was defended by Republican operatives as though their very lives depended upon it.  The recessions of the early eighties, the Iran/Contra Affair.  All of it.  But when the economy tanked before the 92 election, you’d have thought George had farted in the car.

And the reason was simple: George Herbert Walker Bush thought he could run the country.  And that’s just not the kind of thing Republicans expect a president to do.

Fortunately for them, George the Younger never had any such plans.  In fact, he barely ran his own affairs, never mind a country.  But he was affable, healthy looking, and had that cowboy thing that could win over the crowd.  And so they have spent all but the last three years - when only the most die-hard, loonie quarter of the country could stand to hear his name - praising him and defending him.  And when Iraq finally becomes a stable nation - which it will, no matter who is in charge - they’ll be back to take the credit on his behalf after the really hard bit is over.

So in this context, it’s not at all surprising that there are those within the Republican Party who see Sarah Palin as a viable option for 2012.  But I think that wiser heads probably already know that the Quayle Effect has already taken hold and that Palin 2012 is simply not possible.

The Quayle Effect is when a Republican Figurehead in Waiting is exposed as a boob too early, becoming a joke rather than an affably imperfect president.  Reagan was an old fool long before his presidency, constantly saying the dumbest things on camera I’d ever heard before George the Younger came to town.  George W. Bush took presidential farce to a whole new level.  But as long as things are going well and he’s already the president, the public generally forgives these obvious clues to his inefficacy.  Not so if you peak too soon, though.

If your Saturday Night Live impersonator’s act is established before your portrait is hung in the White House, you’re sunk.  Dan Quayle is a darling of the bedrock Conservative Republican wing of the party.  A Goldwater man, through and through.  If they could, there are many within the party that would run Dan Quayle in 2012, or would already have run him by now.  But they cannot do that for one simple reason: the public’s perception of Dan Quayle is that he’s an idiot.  The American People only like electing idiots if they seem more nice than idiotic.  Quayle lost that balance and he won’t be getting it back.

Which brings us back to the Neimann Markus Raidin’, Moose Huntin’ student of the Bush Doctrine, Sarah Palin.  She’s the perfect candidate for the Republican Party, having dillusions of grandeur a-plenty and being blessed with just a half-cup too little brain power to realize it.  She certainly seems to adore the trappings of the presidency, which is nice,, because that keeps her busy while the Real Republicans trot off the ruin the country.  But sadly, Tina Fey’s character has been well-established as a fundamental familiar to Sarah Palin’s buffoonery.  People will probably remember the phrase “I’d like to use a life line, I’d like to phone a friend” bit from SNL more even than the actual woman in four years time.

Which means that, however much the media may want to continue covering her, nothing about the woman is going to change so much as to make the public forget her in any useful way.  She will almost certainly run for the Republican Nomination in 2011.  She will not be debating any Democrats in 2012, however.