Palin emerges in Asia with speech to investors

Former vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin, criticized for her lack of foreign policy experience, emerged in Asia on Wednesday to give a speech that could boost her credentials for a possible bid for the presidency in 2012.

In her first trip to the region, the former Alaska governor addressed an annual conference of global investers in Hong Kong and was to discuss everything from governance to economics and U.S and Asian affairs, according to the event’s organizer.

Palin started off her speech — which was closed to reporters — with a light talk about the links between her state and the southern Chinese territory, then touched later on economic issues.

One attendee said she criticized the U.S. Federal Reserve’s massive intervention in the economy over the last year, arguing its actions only exacerbated the crisis. She also praised the conservative economic policies of former U.S. President Ronald Reagan and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher

Earlier, she talked of Alaska’s salmon exports and complimented Hong Kong as a “beautiful city,” according to a second attendee. Both people spoke on condition of anonymity.

Former President Bill Clinton, former Vice President Al Gore and former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan have spoken in the past at the conference, hosted by brokerage and investment group CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets.

“She was chosen because she’s a woman of news value and presents an opinion that we feel would be of value to our fund managers,” said CLSA spokeswoman Simone Wheeler.

Palin, who burst on the U.S. political scene last year when she was chosen as Republican Sen. John McCain’s running mate, was ridiculed during the campaign after contending her state’s proximity to Russia gave her foreign policy experience.

“You can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska,” she said.

Palin received her first passport in 2007, to visit Alaska National Guard members serving in Kuwait and Germany.

The Hong Kong speech marks her first major appearance since she vanished from public view after she resigned as governor in July.

Since then, she’s signed with the prestigious Washington Speakers Bureau and reportedly been flooded with over a thousand offers.

Palin aides refused to disclose her fee for the appearance, which has been rumored to be in the low six figures.

While she’s thought to be considering a bid for the GOP presidential nomination in 2012, her Hong Kong trip bore no political overtones, said Fred Malek, a friend and Palin adviser.

“You can read a lot of things into it, ‘Is she trying to burnish her foreign policy credentials?’ and the like. But really, it’s a trip that will be beneficial to her knowledge base and will defray some legal and other bills that she has,” Malek said.

CLSA requested Palin’s speech be closed to reporters so she could make an “unfettered” presentation to investors, according to spokeswoman Wheeler. And Palin, whose supporters have long accussed the media of bias and harsh treatment, agreed. Since resigning, Palin has ducked mainstream news outlets and communicated with supporters largely via her popular Facebook page.

Hari Sevugan, a spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, said Tuesday the group knew little about Palin’s speech.

“We’re curious as to what she’s willing to say in private but not in public,” Sevugan said. “Are there other countries that she can see from her window that she doesn’t want us to know about?”

Palin’s father says daughter busy writing book

The father of Sarah Palin, the former governor of Alaska and vice presidential nominee, says his daughter has been steering clear of the media spotlight in recent weeks to focus on writing her memoirs.

Chuck Heath, in Idaho campaigning for a Republican congressional candidate last week, says Palin has been away from her Alaska home for more than a month but is in touch frequently with him.

Heath said he gets e-mails from his daughter when she’s looking for trivial details of her past, things like how many points she scored in a high school basketball game or the year the family attended the Boston Marathon.

“Sarah’s been out of town for almost a month now,” Heath told the Spokesman-Review. “I don’t know exactly where she is, but she’s writing her book. She e-mails me quite frequently. She asks, ‘Oh, what happened on June 13, 1978?’ This is material for her book.”

Palin, 45, who stepped down as governor on July 26 with more than a year left in her first term, does has some global travel plans scheduled for September.

She is expected to visit Hong Kong to address the CLSA Investors Forum, a well-known annual conference of global investment managers, the host announced Monday. Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Alan Greenspan have spoken at the event, hosted by brokerage and investment group CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets.

The Sept. 23 address will mark Palin’s first commercial speaking engagement, according to CLSA. Her speaking fees were not disclosed. It will be closed to the media, and the topic has not yet been confirmed.

Palin has made no public appearances since she resigned as governor but has voiced opinions on health care and other issues via social networking websites like Facebook.

Heath and Jim Palin, Sarah Palin’s father-in-law, visited Idaho to stump for Republican congressional hopeful Vaughn Ward, an Iraq veteran they met when Ward served as Nevada director last year for the McCain-Palin campaign. Ward is seeking the GOP nomination and the chance to take on Democratic incumbent Walt Minnick in Idaho’s 1st Congressional District.

Heath and Palin campaigned for Ward during seven stops in three days. Heath grew up in Hope, Idaho, and taught at Sandpoint Junior High School before moving his family to Alaska when Sarah was an infant.

As for his daughter’s political plans, Heath says: “We absolutely, positively do not know. We haven’t seen the last of her.”

America:Meet Sarah Palin,a reminder why we want her to run for president in 2012

Palin stands by ‘death panel’ claim on health bill

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin refused to retreat from her debunked claim that a proposed health care overhaul would create “death panels,” as the growing furor over end-of-life consultations forced a key group of senators to abandon the idea in their bill.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, one of six lawmakers negotiating on a Senate bill, said Thursday they had dropped end-of-life provisions from consideration “entirely because of the way they could be misinterpreted and implemented incorrectly.”

In a Facebook posting titled “Concerning Death Panels,” Palin argued Wednesday night that the elderly and ailing would be coerced into accepting minimal end-of-life care to reduce health care costs based on the Democratic bill in the House.

But there will be no “death panels” under the legislation being considered. In fact, the provision in the bill would allow Medicare to pay doctors for voluntary counseling sessions that address end-of-life issues. The conversations between doctor and patient would include living wills, making a close relative or a trusted friend your health care proxy, learning about hospice as an option for the terminally ill, and information about pain medications for people suffering chronic discomfort.

The sessions would be covered every five years, more frequently if someone is gravely ill.

The American Medical Association and the National Hospice and Palliative Care Organization support the provision.

In her posting, Palin wrote: “With all due respect, it’s misleading for the president to describe this section as an entirely voluntary provision that simply increases the information offered to Medicare recipients.” She added, “It’s all just more evidence that the Democratic legislative proposals will lead to health care rationing.”

The issue is no longer viable for the six members of the Senate Finance Committee — three Republicans and three Democrats — working on a bipartisan bill, according to Grassley. In a statement, he criticized the House bill, saying there was a difference between a “simple education campaign, as some advocates want,” and paying “physicians to advise patients about end-of-life care.”

The provisions remain in the House bill.

Palin’s posting came one day after Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said that Palin and other critics were not helping the GOP by tossing out false claims. Portions of the Democratic health care bills “are bad enough that we don’t need to be making things up,” Murkowski said, invoking a phrase that Palin used in her resignation speech, when she asked the news media to “quit making things up.”

Murkowski said she was offended at the “death panel” terminology. “There is no reason to gin up fear in the American public by saying things that are not included in the bill,” she said.

Palin hasn’t always been against end-of-life counseling. As Alaska governor, she signed a proclamation making April 16, 2008, Healthcare Decision Day with the goal to have health care professionals and others participate in a statewide effort to provide clear and consistent information about advance directives.

The proclamation noted that only about 20 percent of Alaskans, and 50 percent of severely or terminally ill patients, have an advance directive. “It is likely that a significant reason for these low percentages is that there is both a lack of knowledge and considerable confusion in the public about advance directives,” it said.

Georgia Sen. Johnny Isakson, a Republican who co-sponsored a similar measure in the Senate, said it was “nuts” to claim the bill encourages euthanasia.

And Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D-Ore., who authored the provision on end-of-life counseling, said he is astounded that Palin has not tempered her bleak descriptions of the health care bill.

“It’s deliberate at this point,” Blumenauer said. “If she wasn’t deliberately lying at the beginning, she is deliberately allowing a terrible falsehood to be spread with her name.”

He said the measure would block funds for counseling that presents suicide or assisted suicide as an option, calling references to death panels or euthanasia “mind-numbing.”

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Palin says Obama’s health care plan is ‘evil’

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin called President Barack Obama’s health plan “downright evil” Friday in her first online comments since leaving office, saying in a Facebook posting that he would create a “death panel” that would deny care to the neediest Americans.

“The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down Syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care,” the former Republican vice presidential candidate wrote.

“Such a system is downright evil,” Palin wrote on her page, which has nearly 700,000 supporters. She encouraged her supporters to be engaged in the debate.

The claim that the Democratic health care bills would encourage euthanasia has been circulating on the Internet for weeks and has been echoed by some Republican leaders. Democrats from Obama on down have dismissed it as a distortion. The nonpartisan group FactCheck.org, a project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania says the claim is false.

The allegation appears to be based on a provision of the House bill that would require Medicare to pay for end-of-life counseling sessions, on a voluntary basis, for beneficiaries who want the service. Medicare already covers hospice care. And legislation passed by Congress in 1990 requires that patients be asked if they have a living will.

Obama addressed the controversy during a July 28 AARP-sponsored town hall.

“Nobody is going to be forcing you to make a set of decisions on end-of-life care based on some bureaucratic law in Washington,” he said.

An e-mail sent to Palin’s spokeswoman to confirm authorship of the Facebook posting was not immediately returned Friday. There was no immediate reply to phone messages left late Friday with the White House and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office seeking comment on Palin’s remarks.

Republican criticism has also included claims that the reform plans will lead to rationing, or the government determining which medical procedures a patient can have.

However, millions of Americans already face rationing, as insurance companies rule on procedures they will cover. Denying coverage for certain procedures might increase under proposals to have a government-appointed agency identify medicines and procedures best suited for various conditions.

Palin resigned as Alaska governor on July 26 with nearly 18 months left in her term. She cited not only the numerous ethics complaints that had been filed against her also her wish not to be a lame duck after the first-term governor decided not to seek re-election next year.

Palin, popular with conservatives in the Republican party, has said she wants to build a right-of-center coalition, and there is speculation she will seek the presidency in 2012. In the two weeks since she resigned, Palin has made only one public appearance, giving a Second Amendment rights speech last Saturday before a gun owners group in Anchorage.

Palin or her aides post notes on her Facebook account about once or twice a week, usually to set out policy statements, issue news releases or refute rumors circulating on the Internet.

Palin also has been largely silent before Friday’s Facebook post. She was a voracious user of the social networking site Twitter, and promised to keep her supporters updated with a new private account after she left office. But that hasn’t happened, leaving some of her fans begging for updates in the past two weeks.

Palin addresses gun collectors

Sarah Palin made a weekend public appearance after keeping a low profile since she resigned as Alaska governor July 26.

The former GOP vice presidential candidate gave a speech on Second Amendment rights Saturday night at a banquet in Anchorage.

The event capped a four-day National Rifle Association seminar hosted by the Alaska Gun Collectors Association.

NRA director Wayne Anthony Ross, president of the gun collectors’ group, says Palin attended the dinner with her husband, Todd. Ross says about 130 people were at the banquet.

Gun collector groups from outside the state presented Palin with lifetime memberships. She also received the NRA’s Gold Medal Award of Merit for the Promotion of Gun Collecting.

Next Up for Sarah Palin? ‘Maybe Moose Hunting,’ Says Husband Former Alaska Governor Says, ‘I Feel Great’ After Leaving Office

Alaskans start the work week with a new governor, Sean Parnell, and an old puzzle: Why exactly did the old governor, Sarah Palin, step down, and what are her plans for the future?

So far, only a possible family vacation is on tap, her husband Todd Palin told ABC News.

“Maybe a little moose hunting, what do you think?” he said, adding that he was “very proud” of his wife.

But some political analysts question whether leaving public office could possibly improve her future electoral fortunes.

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“This is a major blow to any presidential aspiration she may have, whether she recognizes it or not, because it’s deadly,” Sabato said of Palin’s surprise resignation. “Her Republican opponents — and a Democrat, if she’s a nominee — can say she up and quit.”

Nevertheless, supporters say Palin, who already has a lucrative book contract in hand, has plenty of options.

“Her future is whatever she wants it to be,” Republican strategist Carl Forti told ABC News. “If that’s TV entertainment or politics. But running for president takes more than charisma. It’s a hard road she can’t do alone. If she intends to run she needs to build a team and get better educated on the issues.”

“She could be a commentator,” Nelson said. “Other things I’ll be looking for: What is the focus of her book? Does she get involved with some foundation? Does she try to do something that puts some thought leadership into some issues? Right now she’s defined as a personality — not a lot of people would ascribe issues to her other than personality.”

Palin officially stepped down as Alaska’s governor late Sunday, saying her reasons for doing so should “be obvious.” But for those still in the dark, she repeated her belief that she thought she could more effectively serve the people of the state by leaving office.

She went out with a bang, delivering a fiery and candid 15-minute farewell speech to a crowd of supporters in Fairbanks, Alaska, in which she lambasted the media and touted Alaska’s history of energy independence.

At times, it sounded as if the former vice presidential candidate was back on the campaign trail, stumping for fiscal conservatism, the development of natural energy resources and moral conservatism.

Yet she gave no hint as to her future in politics, saying only she stepped down in order to spare Alaskans “politics as usual” from her governorship turning into a “lame duck session,” with a year-and-a-half to go.

When it was over, Palin was whisked into a car under heavy security, speaking briefly to ABC News with her baby Trigg in her arms.

“I feel great,” she said. “It was a smooth transition of power as it should be, and a good advancement for the state.”

Palin leaves office with a pile of cash in her political action committee — more than a million dollars strong and growing rapidly since her decision to resign.

Following a farewellseries of picnics across the state over the weekend, Palin leaves behind legions of confused supporters.

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“It breaks my heart because we voted for her, we believe in her,” one supporter said. “She was honest, she was like a breath of fresh air.”

Analysts say she is now in uncharted political territory.

“She runs second in most of the public polls for 2012, so she’ll still very much be a factor as we go forward,” said Republican analyst Frank Donatelli.

She is scheduled to appear at the Reagan Library for an event in August. But, what else? Will she seek higher office or cash in on speaking engagements and a TV deal?

If anyone truly knows, they’re not saying — including the so-called “first dude.”

“It’s been an awesome experience and she’s very happy to serve the residents of Alaska and onto the next chapter of life,” Todd Palin told ABC News. “I guess well just have to wait and see.”

Not even her father, Chuck Heath, seemed to know to know her plans.

“I’m sure she has something else in mind,” Heath said. “[But] I don’t know. I spent two days with her over the Pale River, and she’d be a good poker player — she didn’t lead on to what she wants to do.”"I think Sarah should be president,” said town resident Becca Buyse. “I think she would do a much better job. She has the people’s interest.”

Larry J. Sabato, the director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said that success is in the cards for the soon-to-be former governor.

“What’s she heading to is a lot of money and continuing fame,” he said. “So she’s not giving up anything, she’s gaining a great deal.”

Palin officially leaves office in Alaska

Sarah Palin stepped down Sunday as Alaska governor to write a book and build a right-of-center coalition, but she left her long-term political plans unclear and refused to address speculation she would seek a 2012 presidential bid.

In a fiery campaign-style speech, Palin said she was stepping down to take her political battles to a larger if unspecified stage and avoid an unproductive, lame duck status.

“With this decision, now, I will be able to fight even harder for you, for what is right, and for truth. And I have never felt that you need a title to do that,” Palin said to raucous applause from about 5,000 people gathered at Pioneer Park in downtown Fairbanks.Her first order of business as a private citizen is to speak Aug. 8 at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California. She also wants to campaign for political candidates from coast to coast, and continue to speak her mind on the social networking site Twitter, one of her favorite venues to reach out to supporters.

Free speech was a theme of her farewell speech at a crowded picnic in Fairbanks, as the outgoing governor scolded “some seemingly hell bent on tearing down our nation” and warned Americans to “be wary of accepting government largess. It doesn’t come free.”

She also took aim at the media, saying her replacement, Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell, “has a very nice family too, so leave his kids alone!”

And she told the media: “How about, in honor of the American soldier, you quit makin’ things up?”

She didn’t elaborate, but Palin said when she announced her resignation July 3 that she was tired of the media focus on her family and felt she had been unfairly treated by reporters and bloggers.

Friend and foe alike have speculated that Palin may host a radio or TV show, launch a lucrative speaking career or seek higher office in Washington.

Palin hasn’t ruled out any of those options, and her political action committee, SarahPAC, has raised more than $1 million, said Meghan Stapleton, a spokeswoman for the committee and the Palin family.

Stapleton said Palin is still deciding what her future will be.

“I cannot express enough there is no plan after July 26. There is absolutely no plan,” she told The Associated Press.

Palin’s surprise announcement she was stepping down 17 months before the end of her first term pushed her favorability rating down to 40%, according to a Washington Post-ABC poll. Fifty-three% of those polled gave her an unfavorable rating.

Last summer, almost six in 10 Americans viewed her favorably. The latest poll was taken July 15-18.

Nearly 20 ethics complaints had been filed against Palin, and the outgoing governor cited the resulting investigation’s financial toll — both on her and the state — for stepping down. An independent investigator looking into the complaints found evidence she may have violated ethics laws by trading on her position as she sought money for lawyer fees, according to a report obtained recently by The Associated Press.

Parnell, 46, of Anchorage, was sworn in Sunday as the state’s new governor.

“I’m firmly convinced that Alaska’s greatest days are ahead,” Parnell said in pledging to continue Palin’s policies, which he said “put Alaska first.”

Palin received a warm welcome Sunday, both during her speech and as she served food at the annual Governor’s Picnic.

Among those present was Donna Michaels, 57, of Fairbanks, who wore a red T-shirt that said: “Palintologist.”

The T-shirt defined a Palintologist as “someone who studies Palin and shares her conservative values, Maverick attitude and American style.”

Michaels also held a poster board sign showing the front page of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner when Palin announced she would resign. Michaels altered the banner headline “Palin steps down,” replacing the last word with “up.”

“She’s really not stepping down. She’s stepping up to do something bigger and better,” said Michaels, who attended the picnic with her daughter and two granddaughters, one of whom who wore Sarah Palin-style eyeglasses.

Larry Landry, 51, of Fairbanks held up a red, white and blue sign that read, “Quitting: the new American value.” The other side read: “Thanks for the laughs.”

Landry, a registered independent, said he respected Palin when she ran for governor in 2006, but he felt she changed during last year’s presidential campaign.

“She turned into a vicious vixen,” he said. “She descended into ugly, divisive politics.”

Alaska’s first female governor arrived at the state Capitol in December 2006 on an ethics reform platform after defeating two former governors in the primary and general elections. Her prior political experience consisted of terms as Wasilla’s mayor and councilwoman and a stint as head of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission.

Unknown on the national stage until Republican John McCain tapped her as his running mate, Palin infused excitement into the Republican’s presidential bid. But she also became the butt of talk-show jokes and Democratic criticism, especially after it was revealed that the Republican Party spent $150,000 or more on a designer wardrobe for Palin.

Former state House Speaker John Harris, a Republican with sometimes chilly relations with Palin, said he thinks Palin will run for president in 2012, although he has no inside information.

Stapleton said the answer will emerge in the coming weeks.

On Monday, “we’ll sit down and say, ‘OK, here are your options. How do you now want to effect that positive change for Alaska from outside the role as governor?’” Stapleton said.

Alaska’s new governor shares Palin’s values

Alaska’s new governor, Sean Parnell, says he’ll push many of Sarah Palin’s higher profile initiatives, like the natural gas pipeline.

“We share the same core values,” said Parnell, who took over the office Sunday after Palin resigned.

But he also noted their personalities are different — a fact that hasn’t been lost on the people who deal the most with the governor’s office. State lawmakers are looking for a better relationship after a rocky few months with Palin since she returned from the 2008 presidential campaign.

State Rep. John Coghill, R-North Pole, said Parnell’s years as a lawmaker in both the state House and Senate should help open communications between the executive and legislative branches.

“I think his understanding of how to communicate is going to do him well. That’s one of the things the present governor has struggled with. I think he will just do better at it,” Coghill said.

Parnell’s already reached out to lawmakers. When he announced he wanted lawmakers to expand the call of the Legislature’s Aug. 10 special session beyond confirmation of his choice of lieutenant governor and an attempted override of Palin’s veto of some stimulus funds, he told lawmakers his plans first.

“He actually calls us,” said state House Minority Leader Beth Kerttula, D-Juneau. “He’s going to make more of an effort that way.”

Parnell, 46, was born in Hanford, Calif., in 1962, and moved to Anchorage with his family in 1973, when he was 10. He graduated from East Anchorage High School and Pacific Lutheran University, and earned his law degree from the University of Puget Sound School of Law.

He has practiced law in Anchorage since 1987. Following in the footsteps of his father, Pat, Parnell was elected to the state House in 1992 for two terms. He then was elected to a seat in the Senate, where he was co-chairman of the Finance Committee. He was elected lieutenant governor in 2006.

Two years later, he dramatically and abruptly announced at the state Republican convention that he was challenging U.S. Rep. Don Young in the GOP primary as Young sat in the audience. Young’s chance for a 19th term had been damaged by federal investigations into his fundraising activities, and his spending of more than a $1 million in campaign funds on legal fees.

But Parnell conducted a very low-profile campaign and was seen as squandering the opportunity when Young won the primary by only 304 votes.

At the time, Parnell said he didn’t ask for a recount partly because he was stepping into more official duties of the governor as Palin campaigned as GOP presidential candidate John McCain’s running mate last fall.

Once Palin returned to the state after the bruising national campaign, her relationship with the public and lawmakers changed. Residents began filing ethics complaints against her, and it took a toll on her.

Palin summoned Parnell about 4 p.m. on July 1, asking him to take the short stroll to her plush 17th-floor suite overlooking the city of Anchorage.

Palin and Parnell talked for about 10 minutes as she let him in on a little secret that would have political repercussions in Alaska and beyond: The former vice presidential candidate, the conservative superstar, the possible 2012 White House candidate, was resigning.

It was a decision that was months in the making. But no one in her inner circle who learned of the news could say anything until the official announcement on July 3.

“I was taken aback,” Parnell said. “When the governor takes that kind of a step, it’s a serious thing. It was clear to me she gave it a lot of thought.”

Parnell is not shaking up the cabinet as he steps into office. He’s retained Palin’s commissioners, but will have to replace Craig Campbell in the Department of Military and Veterans Affairs since he’s been tapped as Parnell’s lieutenant governor.

“The question is, will he be able to assemble people and kind of marshal them in a leadership role?” said Rep. Coghill, who predicts Parnell will do well as governor. “I think he’ll be able to do that, but he certainly lacks the kind of pizzaz Gov. Palin has. So that quiet, deliberate leadership, we’ll have to see how it works with the administration as it has been assembled.”

Parnell said his administration will focus on the economy, which he called the key issue now facing Alaskans.

“The main issue is going to be the economy and making sure that we’re positioned for economic growth, making sure that our people have jobs and have jobs in the future,” he said. “That’s No. 1.”

It’s a direction he shares with Palin.

“I’m going to continue her focus on economic planning,” he said. “I’m going to continue her focus on making sure we have natural gas and energy, cheaper energy for Alaskans.”

“Like I said, we share the same core values.”

Sarah Palin Says Farewell to Alaska Governor’s Office With Picnic Tour Poll Shows Her Popularity Is Suffering, but Many Alaskans Support a Political Second Act

On stage last night, Palin said, “This being my last time to speak to the valley community as your governor, I do want to tell you sincerely that I love you, I appreciate you and your support, the support that you’ve shown my family. God bless you and god bless America.”

Though Palin steps down early for no stated reason other than a vague notion of trying to save Alaskans the cost of her many legal battles over ethics complaints, she easily embraced her “picnic tour” of Alaska, which kicked off Friday in her hometown of Wisilia before moving on to Anchorage and ending Sunday in Fairbanks before handing over power to Lt. Gov. Sean Parnell.

“I’m very happy to get to be here in Wasilla,” Palin told ABC News earlier today. “I’m in my hometown and looking forward to spending more time in my hometown.”

The Wasilla crowd is hopeful of greater things to come for their local Republican heroine.

“I think Sarah should be president,” said town resident Becca Buyse. “I think she would do a much better job. She has the people’s interest.”

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But the million-dollar question is: What Palin will do next? Not even her father, Chuck Heath, seems to know her plans.

“I’m sure she has something else in mind,” Heath said. “[But] I don’t know. I spent two days with her over the Pale River, and she’d be a good poker player — she didn’t lead on to what she wants to do.”

Palin herself had little to say about her post-weekend plans.

“Come Monday, I’m going to be finding new avenues to keep working hard for Alaskans,” she told ABC News.

Larry J. Sabato, the director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said that success is in the cards for the soon-to-be former governor.

“What’s she heading to is a lot of money and continuing fame,” he said. “So she’s not giving up anything, she’s gaining a great deal.”

But an increasing number of people feel pessimistic about the self-proclaimed hockey mom: According to a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll, 40 percent of Americans hold a favorable opinion of her overall, down from a high of 58 percent. Fifty-four percent don’t see her as a strong leader and 57 percent don’t think she understands complex issues.

Her numbers shot up among Republicans, however: 70 percent view her positively.

Some political strategists still see a future for Palin in politics, should she choose to pursue one.

“I always thought Sarah Palin had very strong candidate skills, and I think if she wants to run for office there are clearly Republicans out there that like what they hear. She’ll certainly have a receptive audience if she runs for office,” said Republican strategist Terry Nelson, who has advised President George W. Bush and Sen. John McCain in the past.

Still, the current poll numbers are not insignificant, Sabato said.

“What’s driving it is the resignation and all the controversy,” he told ABC News. “Palin’s become a grand soap opera that’s playing out in places where a presidential candidate does not want to be.”

Palin’s Resignation a Head-Scratcher

Palin’s bombshell July 3 announcement that she would quit as governor this Sunday, July 25, spurred speculation about a grassroots presidential run in 2012.

As the GOP wunderkind wraps up her abortive single term as governor, political analysts are scratching their heads over just what Palin is up to, and whether leaving public office could possibly improve her future electoral fortunes.

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“This is a major blow to any presidential aspiration she may have, whether she recognizes it or not, because it’s deadly,” Sabato said of Palin’s surprise resignation. “Her Republican opponents — and a Democrat, if she’s a nominee — can say she up and quit.”

Nevertheless, supporters say Palin, who already has a lucrative book contract in hand, has plenty of options.

“Her future is whatever she wants it to be,” Republican strategist Carl Forti told ABC News. “If that’s TV entertainment or politics. But running for president takes more than charisma. It’s a hard road she can’t do alone. If she intends to run she needs to build a team and get better educated on the issues.”

“She could be a commentator,” Nelson said. “Other things I’ll be looking for: What is the focus of her book? Does she get involved with some foundation? Does she try to do something that puts some thought leadership into some issues? Right now she’s defined as a personality — not a lot of people would ascribe issues to her other than personality.”

Sarah Palin Faces More Negative Image

Palin’s official explanation for her surprise July 3 statement that she would leave office with a year-and-a-half left in her first term is that she wants to spare Alaska the cost of multiple ethics complaints.

But she also invited Americans to join her in a little-explained campaign to pursue her conservative priorities of free enterprise, smaller government, increased drilling for oil and muscular national security. If that were to end in a presidential bid, the governor would have to overcome increasing skepticism.

“As she packs up the Alaska governor’s mansion and pushes back against the latest ethics brouhaha, Sarah Palin’s got other problems: A more negative public image than she held during the 2008 campaign — and broader questions about her grasp of complex issues,” ABC polling director Gary Langer writes.

The increasingly critical scrutiny follows grousing by former McCain aides that Palin focused little on major issues in the 2008 campaign, the disclosure shortly after she joined McCain’s presidential run that her unmarried teenage daughter was pregnant, the tit-for-tat arguments in the press between her daughter and her now-estranged boyfriend, and Palin’s surprising exodus from the job that elevated her national profile.

And then there are the ethics complaints that have reportedly run up $500 million in legal fees, which spawned a legal aid fund that led to yet another ethics complaint. In October, a legislative panel found said Palin had abused her powers as governor by trying to get her ex-brother-in-law fired from the state patrol.

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Media reviews have also been largely unfavorable. In one particularly devastating analysis, Vanity Fair’s Todd Purdum declared Palin the “sexiest and riskiest brand in the Republican Party.” The article went to call her 2008 vice presidential run “disastrous” and her family a “rogues gallery” that makes “Billy Carter, Donald Nixon, and Roger Clinton seem like avatars of circumspection.”

Reviews like that could actually help, some Republicans say.

“Palin can use the bias against the media in the conservative community in her favor,” the GOP’s Forti said. “She can claim she gets a bad rap in the media and that echoes. It’s been a long time since the Republicans have had a plain-talking charismatic candidate like Palin. It’s very easy to see why people like her. Her obstacle now is to take that charisma and prove that a three-quarters-term governor from Alaska is qualified to be president of the United States.”

Republican Still View Sarah Palin Favorably

By leaving office, Palin steps down from a position that could subject her to continued public pillorying by Democrats. Just today in The Washington Post, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and former presidential candidate Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., assail Palin’s energy policies in an op-ed titled “What Palin Got Wrong About Energy Policy.”

“Maybe she’s just tired of all the drama and simply wants to stop the madness surrounding her,” Republican operative Mark McKinnon, who coached Palin during the campaign, recently wrote in the blog The Daily Beast.

One major deficit the former beauty queen, sports reporter and Wasilla mayor would have to overcome in any future electoral bid would be the perception of her leadership. Just 40 percent see her as a strong leader — compared to 71 percent for President Obama — and 54 percent do not see her as a strong leader.

But despite those troubles, Palin still fares well in perceptions by Republicans, 70 percent of whom view her positively, compared with 40 percent of independents and 20 percent of Democrats. Among Republicans and Republican-leaning independents voicing an early preference for the 2012 presidential nomination, 26 percent in the ABC News/Washington Post poll favor former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, 21 percent prefer former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, and 19 percent back Palin.

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The telephone poll, carried out July 15-18, 2009 among a random national sample of 1,001 adults, had a 3.5-point margin of error.

Amid all of the speculation and the negative turn in the public’s perception of her, the real truth surrounding her final weekend as governor is that Palin herself is the only person who truly knows what’s in store for her future.

“Maybe she wants to focus on her family. Maybe she may wants to make a lot of money giving speeches. Maybe she wants to host her own TV show. Maybe she wants to start a Barry Goldwater-like movement. And maybe she wants to run for President in 2012. Or, maybe she’s got a boyfriend in Argentina,” McKinnon quipped. “Only one thing is for sure when it comes to Palin: There is more to come. Probably much more.

Larry J. Sabato, the director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics, said that success is in the cards for the soon-to-be former governor.

“What’s she heading to is a lot of money and continuing fame,” he said. “So she’s not giving up anything, she’s gaining a great deal.”