In a speech that could charitably be called rambling, former Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin announced on Friday that she was resigning as governor of the great state of Alaska, in favor of, among other things, a chance to “fight for all our children’s future from outside the governor’s office.”

Palin also noted, in defense of quitting her job, that lame duck governors (which she apparently assumes she is because she has no intention of running for the office again) tend to “travel around their state, travel to other states, maybe take their overseas international trade missions…I’m not going to put Alaskans through that. I promised efficiencies and effectiveness. That’s not how I’m wired. I’m not wired to operate under the same old politics as usual.”

Apparently, it never occurred to the now-former governor that, seeing how she’s not “wired” that way, she could have easily just stayed in Alaska and worked her butt off until the end of the term she was elected to serve. No need to travel to the outlands.

The I’m-outta-here speech she delivered, though, was decidedly short on logic and almost void of structure; she sounded like she was making it up on the fly before committing to a bungee jump. I mean, really— how could it possibly serve her purposes to stand there and say she’s doing her constituents a selfless favor by surrendering the office 16 months before her time is up?

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This is an unexpected development, to say the least. If Palin wants to run for President of the United States in 2012, as has been the rumor, bailing on her state in the middle of the second worst economic crisis in this nation’s history doesn’t seem like the kind of thing that will score her brownie points. Plus, being the governor of Alaska was the only political cache she had, outside of making John McCain and his handlers look like a bunch of grasping nincompoops during the 2008 election.

But that kind of cache only holds sway with Democrats, and they certainly won’t be voting for her. If Palin really thinks she has the goods to hold the highest office in the land, regardless of whether or not you find the idea ludicrous, she sure has a strange way of showing it.

Initially, I thought the Wasilla announcement smacked of Palin trying to stay one step ahead of the licking stick, that there was yet another colorful embarrassment on the horizon - whether it involved her family, her in-laws, or her own unearned political arrogance - and she finally figured, “Oh, screw it.” But now I’m not so sure. Her “golly gee, look at me” psychology suggests something completely different.

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Palin makes me squirm during speeches and interviews for reasons other than my being aghast at her absurdo-empty policy statements, and I think I finally put my finger on the problem— she’s every pampered cheerleader/beauty queen who made my skin crawl in high school. She’s a year younger than me, so let’s say she’s a junior and I’m a senior. And I know what she’s thinking when she eats her cereal in the morning.

As long as people are cheering and she gets to wink, point, and blow kisses, everything’s just jake. Give her a crowd that’s primed to adore her, and she can hardly contain herself; the more she drops the g’s at the ends of her verbs, the more fun she’s having. She’s just so darn sassy, that Sarah Palin. Winkity-wink-wink, pointity-point-point.

But let a discouraging word or probing queries about actual issues intrude, and she immediately assumes everyone’s ganging up and picking on her. And she moans about it in public to an absurdly unflattering degree. For a supposedly strong woman, she plays the victim card as often as any public figure I can name.

Palin’s now-famous Katie Couric interview, in which she spouted a string of embarrassing non sequiturs and inexplicably decided that a straight answer was impossible when asked what magazines and newspapers she reads, is a prime example of her mysterious victimization. In the aftermath of handling herself so very, very poorly in front of national TV cameras, Palin decried being the target of “gotcha” journalism, which is to say she was asked a couple of straight questions and was “got.”

It was a ridiculous defense, and the first sign that maybe McCain had signed on for an extra bumpy ride that his campaign wouldn’t be able weather. I would've loved to have been sitting in the same room with the McCain brain trust when Sarah went a babblin’ on the evening news. The sound of rectums tightening must have been deafening.