Serving out the full term as governor to which you were elected and sworn into under your state's constitution used to be known as responsibility to the citizens who elected you.

But leave it to Sarah Palin to redefine serving out your full term as "going with the flow."

In fact, Palin's exact words - when she made her startling announcement on Friday that she is quitting just two and a half years into her four-year term - were, "Only dead fish go with the flow." This was wisdom that Palin said she'd acquired during the days she and her husband spent in commercial fishing up there in Alaska.

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa decided to end his prospective 2010 bid for governor of California with some flair, revealing his decision in a nationally televised interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer. But the opt-out by the Democratic mayor of the nation's second most-populous city -- and California's largest -- raises a question: Why would anybody WANT to govern California at this especially difficult point in its history?

The state's long-booming economy was already slowing when the national recession sent it into a tailspin. This has escalated a massive state budget shortfall, which in turn has pitted the overwhelmingly Democratic state legislature against Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The Governator -- as "Terminator" movie star Schwarzenegger once dubbed himself -- has discovered during his relatively short political career that it's lot easier to save the world as a cinematic action hero than it is to break legislative gridlock in Sacramento.

The Republicans who consider themselves possible contenders for their party's 2012 presidential nomination may have their eyes fixed on the political horizon. But they probably should be watching their backs, too.

This was brought to mind by comments that Louisiana Democratic Sen. Mary L. Landrieu made on national TV about Bobby Jindal -- her home state's governor -- who, at age 38, is widely regarded as one of the Republican Party's rising stars and a possible 2012 prospect.

Landrieu, appearing on C-SPAN's "American Morning", said, "Well, if he would stay home in Louisiana a little more and focus on being governor that would be wonderful."

It not likely that the Washington Examiner, a D.C. daily tabloid with a strongly conservative editorial page, means any harm to Bob McDonnell, the Republican nominee for governor of Virginia and former state Attorney General.

But one line in its e-mail news alert Tuesday night on the Democratic primary for governor -- won by state Sen. Creigh Deeds -- is one that could raise some eyebrows among the paper's readers in the populous, politically crucial, and increasingly Democratic-leaning northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C.

"McDonnell is a conservative with strong ties to religious broadcaster Pat Robertson," wrote the Examiner.

There is nothing at all untrue about this. McDonnell, who grew up in the northern Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., received his law degree from Regent University, located in Virginia Beach and initially founded by Robertson as an adjunct of his Christian Broadcasting Network.

If Democrat Terry McAuliffe's weak performance in Virginia's primary for governor proves anything, it's that it is a risk for the chairmen of the parties' national committees to get too carried away with their own importance.

McAuliffe had spent most of his adult life as a major support player in national Democratic politics, a mover, shaker and big-time campaign money-raker. He was best known for his longtime alliance with President Bill Clinton -- at whose behest McAuliffe was installed in 2001 as Democratic National Committee chairman, a position he held for four years - and Hillary Rodham Clinton, now secretary of State, whose campaign for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination was chaired by McAuliffe.

McAuliffe's positions, and his extroverted personality, earned him frequent invitations to appear on television news shows.

But all this, according to nearly complete returns Tuesday night, mattered to fewer than 85,000 Virginians -- or a bit more than 26 percent out of more than 300,000 who participated in the low-turnout, three-candidate primary for governor won by state Sen. Creigh Deeds.

A battery of polls about Tuesday's Democratic primary for Virginia governor agree on two crucial matters:

The contest between state Sen. Creigh Deeds, former Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe and former state Rep. Brian Moran is a cliffhanger, with Deeds edging out to a small but uncertain lead. And a whole lot of respondents say they still aren't fixed on a candidate: 17 percent undecided in a Daily Kos/Research 2000 poll, 22 percent in a Suffolk University poll, and 26 percent in a Public Policy Polling survey (that also showed 44 percent of those who favored a candidate said they could change their minds).

These numbers suggest that the primary outcome will be decided by how all of these undecideds and "soft leaners" swing in Tuesday's voting.

But another set of numbers -- which highlight the dismal history of voter turnout for primaries in Virginia -- suggest something else: that many of those who say they are undecided or aren't strongly committed to a candidate may not bother to vote at all.

Both parties caught the attention of our hyperbole monitors today...

Florida Republican Gov. Charlie Crist made a much-ballyhooed announcement this morning that he'll run for his state's open Senate seat next year -- and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee wasted little time before releasing a barbed statement that essentially blames Crist for the impact of the national recession on his state.

The Democrats' broadside notes that unemployment in Florida under Crist's watch is above the national average, that the state has the second highest home foreclosure rate in the nation, and that the recently passed Florida budget raises taxes and cuts some social services to address a $6 billion gap.

OK, all's fair in politics. But the governor's seats in some other states with exceptionally high unemployment, such as Michigan and Ohio, are being defended by the Democratic Party. Is the DCCC suggesting that the Democratic incumbents there are responsible for the dire impacts of the recession? Of course not... but you can bet the Republicans will respond in kind there.

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Republican Senate campaign strategists hope to clear the 2010 Florida primary field for star recruit Charlie Crist, the popular Republican governor, who today announced his bid to succeed retiring Republican Sen. Mel Martinez.

But not everyone in Florida's sizable and politically potent Cuban-American community will be lighting a cigar and raising a Cuba Libre (that's rum and coke) to Crist's fortunes -- at least not yet.

That's because one of their own -- Marco Rubio, a former state House Speaker -- beat Crist to the punch by announcing his own Senate candidacy last week.

Sure, the GOP brass has consolation prizes in hand to try to persuade Rubio to stay out of Crist's way in 2010: A run instead for the now-open governor's seat or some other major statewide office.