Sarah Palin has become the most famous Alaskan in history. Celebrity is her one accomplishment since John McCain selected her as his running mate a year ago.
The rest of the last year has held, for her, turmoil and failure.
After bringing Republican National Convention delegates in St. Paul to their feet during her acceptance speech, Palin proved she lacked the experience, education, self-awareness and media savvy to campaign successfully for vice president. The more voters knew about her, the less they expressed confidence in her.
Palin's shrill attacks on Barack Obama as a friend of terrorists and as a dilettante community organizer transformed many Americans who were neutral or indifferent to her into unforgiving enemies. She also went out of her way to create enemies in Alaska. Before she left for St. Paul, the governor cooperated with Alaska Democrats, sought them out as allies in passing oil, gas and ethics legislation. After St. Paul, she began feuding with them - especially over Troopergate - and a donnybrook of name calling and charges followed that lasted for months.
The "Truth Squad" Palin formed in Anchorage told so many lies that it became the butt of ridicule among journalists. While the Truth Squad defended her with fiction, Palin made herself a professional victim who blamed others for the controversy swirling around her as she attempted to govern and remain on the national stage.
The 2009 legislative session was without victories. Palin warred with legislators over President Obama's stimulus money, and if she threw the first punch, vetoing more than $28 million from Washington, they had the last word, over-riding the veto. She suffered a stunning defeat when lawmakers rejected her nominee for attorney general, Wayne Anthony Ross.
In July, she resigned as governor, becoming a private citizen rather than continue the fight from elected office. Her farewell speech in Fairbanks was vintage Palin - wandering, accusatory, self-pitying - without dignity or a sense of the historic importance of the moment. The speech also lacked craft. Palin threw around metaphors like a woman heaving lights and decorations at a Christmas tree: wherever they stick, good enough for me. Her language exposed her to further ridicule, especially among the late-night talk-show hosts who likened her words to bad Beat poetry.
With this resume, how did she remain a celebrity? Palin's good looks, compelling if chaotic family story and exotic origins - Alaska - made her the object of national curiosity, and the curiosity continues. During the presidential campaign, she drew large crowds as a culture warrior, and these crowds have never abandoned her no matter how poor her performance. In fact, performance is immaterial to these crowds. They feel an affinity for her; nothing else matters. She represents them, she stands for them, she symbolizes them. Her struggles are theirs, her enemies theirs. Criticize her and you hear a chorus of admirers demanding "How dare you! How dare you!"
Late last summer Philip Gourevitch of The New Yorker interviewed Palin. The quotes Gourevitch published show her as rambling and prattling but relaxed, comfortable, and content as governor of Alaska.
The Palin whom Gourevitch found when he visited the governor's office no longer exists. Today, she is shrill, angry, and brutally partisan when not incoherent.
There is no Palin movement. No Palin program. She is not a leader in any sense of the word unless you consider leadership the ability to provoke a crowd to hiss and boo. As Gourevitch has said, "She has a genius for getting attention - that's all."
Maybe Sarah Palin will write a best seller. Maybe she will earn riches from her book - or from becoming a talking head on TV. But nobody in recent memory has made less of a full year on the national stage than Sarah Palin.
What a waste.
Michael Carey is the former editorial page editor of the Anchorage Daily News and the host of "Anchorage Edition."