Palin, Romney: run for president?

The question of whether Sarah Palin would enter the 2012 Republican presidential primary occupied political media through most of 2011 before she announced in October that she would not seek the nomination—a decision that her supporters treated as a sacrifice and her critics as an acknowledgment of unresolvable liabilities.

Palin had spent the years since the 2008 vice-presidential campaign building a media and commercial brand that made her one of the most recognizable figures in American conservative politics without subjecting herself to the accountability structures of holding office or running a formal campaign. The arrangement was profitable and, she appeared to calculate, indefinitely sustainable.

A presidential run would have required a different kind of exposure. Campaign finance disclosure, debate preparation, the organizational demands of operating in multiple states simultaneously, and sustained scrutiny from a press corps motivated to find weaknesses—these were conditions under which the gap between Palin's political celebrity and her policy depth would have been difficult to manage.

Her decision cleared the field for Mitt Romney, who had been running since before the 2008 cycle ended and who entered 2012 as the establishment favorite. Romney faced challenges from a series of insurgent candidates—Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum—each of whom briefly led polls before collapsing under scrutiny or organizational failure.

Romney's eventual nomination reflected the Republican Party's reluctant consolidation around the candidate with the most credible general election rationale even when significant portions of the base found him ideologically insufficient.

Palin, for her part, never warmed to the nominee during the primary season. She withheld her endorsement through the spring — telling Fox News she had voted for Newt Gingrich in the Alaska caucuses — and only backed Romney in the closing stretch of the general election campaign.