Notepad

• Palin hasn't shown a shred of Nixon's talent.

• She doesn't have six years to quietly work the conservative party machinery while making public statements that pin the president to his base and, by comparison, reposition her and her party as the center.

• Palin doesn't have Nixon's interest in, or knowledge of, foreign affairs. Imagine the reaction if Palin suggested she had a "secret plan" to win the war in Afghanistan. Even Republicans would wonder aloud if she thought she could see Kabul from her doorstep.

• To capitalize on political backlash, as Nixon did with civil rights and Vietnam, a candidate has to represent an aggrieved center against a perceived ideological fringe. More than any other major party nominee for president or vice president in recent memory, Palin is the fringe.

• Perhaps most important, Palin seemed to prove Friday that she doesn't have Nixon's heart for political battle.

It's true that running for re-election, perhaps in a tough environment in 2010, would have made it more difficult for Palin to do the necessary legwork for a 2012 presidential bid.

But running from the governorship -- rather than for it -- is hardly a recommendation for the presidency. It's like walking into a job interview as an air traffic controller and telling the hiring authority that you quit your last job as a crossing guard because the pressure was getting to be too much.

What of the Alaska voters who thought she would fulfill at least the one term to which she was elected? Right now, it looks like Wasilla mayor was the toughest job Palin could finish. Maybe, just maybe, she has abandoned her plans to run for the White House and was simply bowing out for good.

But if not, her resignation was a mistake.

"Former Alaska" anything is hardly what you want to be introduced as in a presidential debate -- just ask Former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel.

And, as Nixon once said, "A man is not finished when he is defeated. He is finished when he quits."

Buchanan may not have written it, but he's surely heard it.