Our political Quote of the Day comes from David Broder, who writes this about former Vietnam-war era Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and soon to be former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin:
McNamara stayed too long and left too quietly. Palin is bailing out on her people far too soon. Neither can serve as an example for those in government wrestling with the decision of when to quit.
UPDATE: We’ll also add this item from MSNBC’s First Read:
Republican strategist (and NBC analyst) Mike Murphy again takes on Sarah Palin. He calls her “the political train wreck that keeps on giving.” He said she “brought nothing to the [McCain] ticket except a surefire knack for exciting voters who were already reliably Republican.” More: “We are now told the party base — those voters who will vote for a bag of cement if it has an R or D attached to it — must be carefully appealed to, romanced and appeased. Under that funhouse reasoning, Palin was an inspired pick.” And: “She lacks any real accomplishment – no military or private-sector career of note, no academic achievement beyond a frenetic bounce between five colleges, including a sun ‘n’ surf-oriented outfit in Hawaii. She has served only two years as governor of a small and uniquely easy-to-govern state (other governors pine for Alaska’s small population and billions of dollars in easy revenue from oil production), a job she has now abandoned.” To her presidential chances? “[S]he may have enough support to attempt a run for President. She’ll lose, of course, almost certainly the Republican primaries and certainly the general election.”
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.