WITHOUT INTENDING TO, SAM TANENHAUS EXPLAINS WHY WE CAN BE SURE PALIN IS RUNNING IN 2012

Sam Tanenhaus reviews Sarah Palin's book in the current New Yorker, and he tells you everything you need to know to confirm the fact that she is, in fact, going to run for president in three years -- or at least that she sees no impediment whatsoever to a run:

To an extent unmatched by any recent major political figure, she offers the erasure of any distinction -- in skill, experience, intellect -- between the governing and the governed. As one supporter told Conroy and Walshe [authors of the book Sarah from Alaska, "If she can run a home, she can run the government." Palin agrees: "There's no better training ground for politics than motherhood." Describing the responsibilities of managing Alaska's budget, she makes the same argument in fancier language: "Lessons learned on the micro level still apply to the macro. Just as my family couldn't fund every item on our wish list, and had to live within our means as well as save for the future, I felt we needed to do that for the state." Her insistent ordinariness is an expression not of humility but of egotism, the certitude that simply being herself, in whatever unfinished condition, will always be good enough.

(Emphasis added.)

That's exactly it. Everyone expecting her to prepare for a presidential run by learning and studying, or to forgo a run because she doesn't want to learn and study, is missing the point -- she doesn't think she needs to prepare for the presidency any more than she's already prepared, by just living.

And her fans agree. Did you see Joe Verran being interviewed on NBC at Palin's book signing in Grand Rapids on the subject of Palin's qualifications for the presidency, in the first half of the clip below?

JOE VERRAN, PALIN SUPPORTER: ...considering the three we had running last time along with Sarah Palin, she was by far the most qualified to hold that office today.

NORAH O'DONNELL (incredulous): More qualified than John McCain, her running mate?

VERRAN: More qualified -- John McCain, Joe Biden, and Barack Obama, all they've ever done is hold a seat in the Senate for a debate committee.



Nope -- not even McCain's military service cuts it with these folks anymore. He's no Palin -- as Verran tells us, she's "a very real person." And that's what she thinks, too. She thinks that's all the qualification she needs.