Andrew Malcolm: Palin's ahead of where Obama was 30 months before his nomination

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Our friend Andrew Malcolm at the LA Times puts that controversial WaPO/ABC News poll *(the one which oversamples Democrats by 6 percent) into perspective:

A recent Washington Post/ABC News Poll found that 30 months out from the 2012 party presidential nominations, only 71% of Americans believe that Sarah Palin is not qualified to be president.

This compares with someone named Barack Obama. At the same point in his then unannounced campaign, 0% thought he was qualified for the Oval Office. That's because he wasn't even on the polling lists' radar then.

The Illinois senator didn't show up on the polling charts until 24 months before the 2008 elections, just two months before his official announcement in Springfield, Ill. And even then he trailed the presumptive nominee, Hillary Clinton, 29-22, as the choice for the Democratic presidential nomination.

To illustrate how accurate such polls were in those medieval days of this century, someone named Al Gore was the third choice among Democrats then, followed closely by -- don't laugh now -- John Edwards.

The same predictive accuracy may well apply to Tuesday's CNN/Public Opinion Poll showing that on only his 392d day in office, a majority of Americans (52%) have already decided to deny Obama a second term in office about 980 days or so from now.

All of which is vivid proof of how quickly the modern American presidential selection process and landscape is changing, making traditional patterns of political prediction as reliable as Prius brakes.

Andrew cites some things former Gov. Palin has going in her favor: She is an outsider at a time when those inside Washington are being held in low esteem, and her decision to step down from the governor's officein Alaska has given her the luxuries of time and freedom of movement. Though she was widely criticized for it at the time, she is now free to take advantage of priceless face time as a Fox News contributor and to fire up her base, as she has been doing at venues such as the National Tea Party Convention, a campaign rally for Rick Perry in the Houston area and last Sunday's Daytona 500, where 100,000 NASCAR fans were in attendance.

Also helping her case, says Andrew, are recent columns in the mainstream media by David Broder and Jules Whitcover, both of which run counter to the DNC talking point that Sarah Palin is not to be taken seriously. But at this stage of the game, the only polls which may have any meaning are those which measure Sarah Palin's strength against other likely Republican presidential candidates for 2012. As Andrew points out, if she decides to run, job one for a candidate Palin would be to win the GOP nomination. And she's in pretty good shape to get that done, as nearly 70 percent of Republicans view her in a favorable light.

Andrew's exit question:

"What base does anyone see coalescing around other potential GOP competitors?"

The full Malcolm op-ed is, as always, well worth the read at the Top of the Ticket.

- JP